portrait of 5.5 designers by Thomas Mailaender

With Apparat, 5.5 chose a balancing act, working with the Home collection’s Harcourt glass and the Marie Louise vase, evoked here with medallions or a filigreed design on clear crystal of exquisite purity.

The 5.5 Designers and the Apparat Collection
   In truth, the three musketeers were four – and so are the 5.5. Claire Renard, Vincent Baranger, Jean Sébastien Blanc and Anthony Lebossé met at the drafting tables of the Ecole Nationale des Arts Appliqués. Sharing the same creative mindset, they joined forces immediately, diplomas in hand.
   Their first exhibit, “Reanim, médecine des objets”, held in 2003, was a poetic, humorous collection featuring prosthetics for wounded everyday objects, revealing an awareness of ecological design ahead of its time.
Their credo? To design “honest and accessible” products, while continuing to elevate the ordinary. A host of brands spotted the 5.5 crew right away, sensing a new source of creativity in their incisive and fresh work. They have since designed for Bisazza, Salviati, Oberflex and Salernes. In 2008, the 5.5 group will have a retrospective of its work in Seoul and Warsaw. The designers are also working with Chocolat Factory, Droog Design and, now, Baccarat.
   "Apparat" pays homage to the Harcourt glass. The collection they designed captures the aura of an iconic glass or a Marie Louise vase in filigree or gilt medallions, on glasses, carafes and vases. The pure forms of these objects, like the Dyonisos carafe, are chosen from among Baccarat’s contemporary archetypes.
   In this cultural “mix and match” of classic icons and pure forms, we observe an impulse to blur the rules of the genre to achieve another seductive view of the object. Nothing is lost and everything is transformed, thanks to the skilled hand and original talent of 5.5.

text by Chantal Granier

Silhouette / Crystal and gold gilded motif

Motif / Crystal and gold gilded motif

Motif & Médaillon / Crystal and gold gilded motif