Lalique 2024 UK Web

LIFESTYLE

EXCELLENCE IN BEAUTY PACKAGING

L alique has always had a flair for drawing on its unique expertise to serve the ideas of talented designers who share its passion for excellence as well as its indomitable will to perpetuate the French art of living worldwide. Among these fruitful collaborations, those with Pierre-Yves Rochon come across very naturally, because crystal has been an endless source of inspiration and creativity for this acclaimed French interior designer. It was therefore hardly surprising that he sought out the Lalique Interior Design Studio to conceive the crystal ornamentation to be featured in his sumptuous design for the new bar at The Dorchester in London, part of a sweeping renovation completed in March 2023. When the shimmering Artists’ Bar first comes into view at the far end of the elegant restaurant The Promenade that connects it to the hotel’s lobby, visitors are immediately entranced by the magnificent semi-circular counter standing majestically at the centre of the space. Its impressive marble top rests on a base encrusted with a series of twenty crystal legs, reprising the exquisite plant motif created by Marc Lalique in 1951 for the renowned Cactus table. It took the talents of six dedicated master glassmakers and ten weeks of handwork in the hot-glass workshops of the Alsatian factory to fashion these legs, each weighing an impressive eighteen kilos. The plant-inspired decoration is masterfully accentuated in all its detail by means of vertical lighting, cleverly designed to bring out the curves of the cactus leaves, conveying both vigour and delicacy. Thousands of gold leaf accents, applied in the background over the entire surface of the base, magnify the highly polished lustrous crystal opulence so characteristic of the Lalique style. At the rear of the bar, two impressive vertical arrangements of panels decorated in Lalique’s iconic Coutard pearl pattern serve as the fitting backdrop for each evening’s performance by the hotel’s mixologists, genuine artists in residence. Eighteen reflective panels lining both side walls, lit by a chromed 3.5-metre fixture, offer a constant rejoinder to the visual play of the ceiling mirrors and the resplendence of Liberace’s legendary piano, the tinkling of ivories blending harmoniously with the symphony of cocktail shakers. While the Artists’ Bar is an ode to the most celebrated artists of the British scene whose work adorns the premises, it also pays homage to the exceptional artisans behind its creation who have helped give birth to London’s newest temple of glamour.

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