Baccarat In the Eye of Harry Nuriev

Baccarat unveils a new chapter in its collaboration with designer and artist Harry Nuriev through an exhibition presented at the Crosby Gallery from 15 to 18 January, then at Maison Baccarat from 20 January 2026. We look back on a collaboration that began two years earlier, at the time of Baccarat’s Parisian renaissance.

We remember, in 2024, the reopening of Baccarat’s Parisian address on Place des États-Unis. The inauguration was marked by the then-nascent collaboration between the crystal house and artist and designer Harry Nuriev. His vision for the company was reflected at the time in the shop’s porch, which he transformed into a ‘visual manifesto of craftsmanship and audacity with engraved, silverplated and coloured motifs’, in the words of the Baccarat team, and then developed in the vestibule, surprisingly decked out with refrigerators housing the company’s most iconic creations.

This successful first collaboration led to Harry Nuriev’s 2025 transformation of three major pieces in the collections: the Harcourt goblet and carafe, and the Sirius ball. In the workshops, artisans engraved and enamelled a vernacular imagined by the artist, selecting words that evoked charm and celebration. Regarding this second opus, Baccarat states, ‘Guided by the experimental and committed principles of transformism, an artistic approach he espouses, Harry Nuriev reinvents the existing without distorting it, giving new life to objects while honouring their memory. A free and impertinent approach, faithful to the creative spirit of Baccarat’.

But his reinterpretation goes even further when he is offered the opportunity to reinvent Baccarat’s emblem, the piece that is unquestionably the most representative of the house: the Zenith chandelier. Under the artist and designer’s hand, the crystal object is transformed into a work of art that combines the house’s expertise with everyday objects. Within a metal structure, crystal rubs shoulders with jewellery, capsules, pens, CDs and other key rings, entering into dialogue with the twisted branches, lilies, prisms, bells and garlands of octagons of the Zenith.

‘Through this interpretation, Baccarat’s Zenith chandelier becomes a messenger, carrying pieces of our present into an imagined future, where repurposing becomes a way of life nourished by everything we once neglected. In reshaping it, I remembered the joy and magical light it once brought to a family’s table, while envisioning another reality: a future where crystal would no longer be available. In this imaginary world, those who inherit the chandelier must replace its missing elements with the objects they have at their disposal.

Everyday things — those we barely notice today — suddenly become precious. The disposable becomes treasure. Values are reversed. Ordinary objects are transformed into symbols of care, memory and survival’, says Harry Nuriev. In 2026, he will unveil a unique collaboration with Baccarat in an exhibition that looks back on the history of this encounter and the creative future it heralds. •

photos : Zenith Chandelier, Baccarat x Harry Nuriev © Baccarat