Dom Pérignon unveils porcelain armor for Vintage 2008

Like a piece of armor protecting precious goods, French contemporary artist Juliette Clovis dreamt up an ornament made of porcelain scales to enclose’s Vintage 2008 Champagne. Working with clay, her medium of choice, Clovis fashioned hundreds of porcelain scales that she affixed individually to the glass of the brand’s emblematic bottle.

Clovis hand-crafted three types of scales using different sized molds. The artist molded the raw clay in her workshop, and then fired the material at high temperature. The finished scales were enameled or chromed depending on the chosen finish, with up to three passes needed to achieve a harmonious finish on certain colors. The scales neatly overlap to create the effect of an armor, while the smallest scales were designed with a slightly different shape to conform to the bottle’s curves.

Dom Pérignon x Juliette Clovis: a play on light & color

With a visual effect moving from dark to light, Clovis developed three color gradients: black scales are affixed to the top of the jeroboam, a gun metal effect on the middle, and platinum at the base. The black aluminum collar was color matched to the black scales and features an engraved Dom Pérignon x Juliette Clovis logo.

The brand’s iconic shield-shaped label, this time in porcelain, was molded by Limoges-based manufacturer La Manufacture de la Seynie with the text applied via chromolithography, a technique similar to screen printing. A type of decal bearing the text is superposed onto the porcelain before being fired at 820°C. The scales surrounding the porcelain label were cut to fit its contours.

Dom Pérignon Vintage 2008 x Juliette Clovis launched in September. Some 50 pieces are available worldwide for private clients.