Hennessy, Baccarat and Jean-Michel Othoniel are Crafting Time

In our latest examination of how established houses engage with contemporary creatives, we turn to Hennessy’s seventeen-year relationship with French artist Jean-Michel Othoniel. This latest chapter – the X.O Masterpiece and X.O Limited Edition – demonstrates what happens when a brand moves beyond transactional artist partnerships towards something genuinely sustained and conceptually rich.

Hennessy’s commissioning strategy, which has included collaborations with the late Frank Gehry as well as Tom Dixon and Kim Jones, reveals a particular approach. The cognac house invites artists not simply to embellish existing forms, but to interpret its processes and philosophies through their own creative language. Recent partnerships demonstrate this: Chinese fashion designer Shuting Qiu reimagining the Year of the Snake through traditional brocade patterns, South African urban artist FAITH XLVII becoming the first female voice in the decade-long V.S Limited Edition series. 

With Othoniel, celebrated for his intricate glass sculptures that play with light and form, this meant spending time with the master blender in Cognac, understanding the temporal complexity of a spirit that blends eaux de vie aged between 50 and 100 years. His approach was to translate one craft to another: the X.O Masterpiece, crafted in Baccarat crystal with hand-carved oak housing (limited to 100 pieces), and the ruby-red X.O Limited Edition, finished in gold-tone metal. They represent a recognising that artists bring more than aesthetic polish. If collaborated with care, the artist can bring new frameworks for understanding what a house does, and who it might speak to next.

We asked Othoniel to explore his creative process with Hennessy, and to understand why these alignments matter.

What did you take from your experience with the master blender and the art of crafting cognac?

It starts with the colour, and then speaking with the maker I discovered the complexity of the taste. These guys are not working for the present but for the future using the past. They use eau de vie from 50 to 100 years old and decided to mix it all together to create the cognac of today. But at the same time, they are also preparing for the future since, unlike winemaking, with cognac you cannot taste it for many years.

So, for me it’s a conceptual art piece because you work with different time slots. And that’s why there is this idea of this shell in the wood, inspired by the craftsmen who are re-carving the barrel with such a beautiful technique and all by hand. So, I pay homage to the craftsmen by using the oak as the shell of the bottle and making it like a precious stone.

How did you approach translating that understanding into the design?

I visited the X.O blender in Cognac. Seeing the process, I thought ‘my gosh, all of these different colours’. When you look closely you can see there is some purple, yellow and amber in the cognac. So, the cognac became the first gemstone of this object. I wanted to make a bottle with the cutting glass that reflects all of these different colours.

This sounds like a complex process. What were the design challenges?

The idea was to bring the poetry and beauty and wonder that is in my work and introduce it to this very masculine cognac. To try and bring something a bit more, maybe, complex and sensual and at the same time keeping this very strong feeling you have when you drink the cognac.

The Masterpiece is an art piece, but it must also be made to be used, and this was the most complex thing for me as an artist. The creative team at Hennessy helped me resolve these issues. For example, the bottle is very beautiful – we took a rough shape of the iconic bottle working with the glass blowers to cut the glass – it’s crystal and there’s so many facets on it, but it’s very heavy. And since it is all made by hand, every bottle is different.

Meanwhile, the decanter is housed in carved wood – it was never supposed to be replicated 100 times – but we found a person to carve each one by hand. It really is a masterpiece in terms of craft. In the end for me really, this is a piece of art.

You worked closely with Baccarat on the complex crystal colour creation. Can you speak of the experience?

It is the first time I’ve worked with coloured crystal. Baccarat is the best in terms of colours, so when I decided I wanted to find colours reminiscent of the cognac – the spice and ruby red, the grey when feeling smoke and spice and chocolate – I made a watercolour of what I wanted and said to them: okay, you’re the best at colour, prove it. And they did. They created these specific colours for us. It became a new palette in my work but also in their craft.

Working with Baccarat was quite safe in a way because I knew they were experts in colour and cutting. But for the wood it was a bit challenging because it was hard to find someone to do it. And I wanted to keep it the purest as possible – the most discrete and magical as possible. Today it’s important to bring beauty to the world. It’s something I try to do in my work.

And why did you decide against placing a label on the X.O Masterpiece?

We agreed not to put a label on it since it is very important to face the beautiful colour of the cognac first and not look at a label. You recognise that it is Hennessy, then when you look closely on the metal you see my name and the X.O.

Photography copyright ©Hennessy