Ruinart and Hubert le Gall glasses

View of The Glass Calendar collection by Ruinart and Hubert le Gall featuring different colours and shapes pictured against a light coloured background

Paris-based artist Hubert le Gall has collaborated with Champagne house Ruinart to create 12 sculptural works in Murano glass that have been presented at Art Basel on Miami Beach

(Image credit: Ruinart)

By Yoko Choy

published 4 December 2015

in Features

Champagne house Ruinart complements the artistry produced in its vineyards and winery with inspirational collaborations in the art world and has worked with prominent practitioners such as Georgia Russell and Gideon Rubin in the past decade. The house has just wrapped up a year-long project with French artist and scenographer Hubert le Gall and presented the fruitful result – The Glass Calendar – at Art Basel on Miami Beach.

Paris-based le Gall started the project at the estate in Sillery, where he learnt about the Champagne’s symbolic Chardonnay grape variety and its nurturing landscape, and witnessed the moment when the sun’s rays run through the fruit and produces a transparent, radiant quality, which is also reflected in the house’s famed cuvée, 'Blanc de Blancs.' artist soon decided that glass would be the best medium to depict this story; and it was an obvious choice to look to Murano’s glassmaking mastery to realise his vision.

Made at the Berengo Studio in collaboration with Fondazione Berengo, le Gall realised a series of 12 sculptural works. Each illustrates a dedicated moment in each month of the vineyard year through its luminosity and lightness, and together they portrayed the cycle of life. In this harmonic work, in a carefully curated range of colours, from powdery snow-white through pale yellow-green to light platinum-gold, le Gall captured the rhythm of the seasons and the passing of time.

The show also marked the US debut of le Gall’s Ruinart coffret design, which is available through select retailers in a limited edition of 2,800.

Two side-by-side photos of Ruinart champagne next to green sphere-shaped pieces of glass and three sculptural glass pieces from The Glass Calendar collection — Le Gall takes inspiration from the soft, yet dazzling colour of Ruinart’s famed Blanc de Blancs cuvée for the series

View of Hubert le Gall wearing a shirt, grey top and jeans making a mark with a red pen in a workshop — Each sculpture reflects the changing colours of the grapes from month to month to form a ’glass calendar’ depicting the annual cycle of the vineyard

Two side-by-side photos of two pieces from The Glass Calendar collection pictured against a light coloured background. The first piece features clear and yellow glass spheres and the second piece features blue glass spheres and white glass elements — *The Glass Calendar* collection was made at the Berengo Studio in collaboration with Fondazione Berengo

INFORMATION

For more information, please visit the Ruinart website

Photography courtesy of Ruinart

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Yoko Choy is the China editor at Wallpaper* magazine, where she has contributed for over a decade. Her work has also been featured in numerous Chinese and international publications. As a creative and communications consultant, Yoko has worked with renowned institutions such as Art Basel and Beijing Design Week, as well as brands such as Hermès and Assouline. With dual bases in Hong Kong and Amsterdam, Yoko is an active participant in design awards judging panels and conferences, where she shares her mission of promoting cross-cultural exchange and translating insights from both the Eastern and Western worlds into a common creative language. Yoko is currently working on several exciting projects, including a sustainable lifestyle concept and a book on Chinese contemporary design.