Frank Gehry Designs Gold Crinkled Hennessy X.O Bottle For Its 150th Anniversary

By Mikelle Leow, 26 Oct 2020

Image via PRNewsfoto / Hennessy

River currents along the Hennessy Maison now dress up the new limited-edition Hennessy X.O bottle, designed by celebrated architect Frank Gehry for the cognac’s 150th anniversary.

To celebrate this milestone, Gehry handcrafted a crinkled 24-carat gold-dipped bronze sleeve illustrating the vitality of the Charente River in Cognac, west France, as it dances and reflects light. The magnificent cover is also envisioned to bring up feelings of drinking cognac and portray its intricate distillation process.

Along with the golden sleeve, the architect created a stunning fractured glass glorifier—further exploring the sensorial experience of water and light—to encase the bottle. He also designed a brass and gold fusil, which is used to sample the cognac for quality assurance.

Gehry detailed to Dezeen that it was important for the bottle to embody Hennessy X.O’s “hand-made quality” and accredit “the human hand by the craftspeople” behind the spirit. To him, this concept of paying homage offers a “different” spin to being “respectful of the history.”

The special-edition bottle arrives in a protective cardboard box reminiscent of the corrugated-cardboard furniture that Gehry designed in the 1970s.

As for his thoughts about working on a physically smaller-scale item as opposed to buildings, Gehry described that designing a bottle bears “an intimacy… that you don’t always get to explore in larger buildings.” He appreciated that something could be designed and materialized so quickly.