harry nuriev swaps crystal for everyday objects in baccarat’s chandelier, rethinking value

Harry Nuriev reimagines Baccarat’s Zénith chandelier

Harry Nuriev collaborates with Baccarat for a unique reworking of the Maison’s historic Zénith chandelier. On view at the Crosby Gallery until January 18th, 2026, and at Maison Baccarat in Paris starting January 20th, the project repositions the chandelier as a speculative object shaped by scarcity, memory, and reuse. Drawing on his concept of transformism, Nuriev inserts pens, jewelry, bottle caps, CDs, keychains, and more fragments of everyday life into the iconic crystal structure, proposing a future where the ordinary becomes precious.

Nuriev approaches the chandelier as a carrier of cultural memory. ‘The Zenith Baccarat chandelier becomes a messenger, carrying pieces of our present into an imagined future, where repurposing becomes a way of life sustained by whatever we once overlooked,’ the designer shares. His intervention is not decorative but narrative, imagining a world in which crystal no longer exists, forcing future owners to substitute missing elements with whatever they can find. The result is a speculative archaeology of the present, where disposable objects acquire symbolic weight and emotional value.

Chandelier Baccarat x Harry Nuriev | images by Palast Studio

Crystals meet found materials in a hybrid light installation

This reimagined Zénith draws on the sculptural vocabulary of the chandelier, including twisted arms, fleurs de lys, arrowed prisms, octagon chains, and small bells, while extending its form through a visible metallic framework. This structural addition becomes part of the composition, emphasizing the hybrid identity of the work between functional lighting, installation, and emotional artifact. Fine crystal manufacturer Baccarat describes the piece as both monumental and intimate, conceived as an experience that blurs boundaries between utility and expression.

The collaboration follows Nuriev’s earlier interventions at Maison Baccarat, where he transformed the entryway into a graphic manifesto of gestures, words, and symbols associated with crystal-making. Across all of these works, the New York- and Paris-based designer‘s approach avoids nostalgia, dislocating the past and placing historical objects into speculative futures, where their meaning must be renegotiated. In doing so, the collaboration with Baccarat becomes more about value as something unstable, relational, and dependent on memory.

Harry Nuriev collaborates with Baccarat for a unique reworking of the Maison’s historic Zénith chandelier

the project repositions the chandelier as a speculative object

Nuriev inserts pens, jewelry, bottle caps, CDs, keychains into the iconic crystal structure

the designer approaches the chandelier as a carrier of cultural memory

imagining a world in which crystal no longer exists

project info:

name: Zénith Chandelier 

designer / artist: Harry Nuriev | @harrynuriev

client: Baccarat | @baccarat

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