Take your living space through a marine odyssey with luxury glass and crystal-maker Daum’s 2024 collection

With meticulous craftsmanship, Daum reimagines iconic underwater scenes, blending art and nature in stunningly detailed creations.

Daum, a premier luxury glass and crystal-making maison from France, has been crafting Art Nouveau masterpieces since 1878. Drawing inspiration from the natural world – flora, fauna, and organic forms – the brand continues to evolve whilst staying true to its roots. This legacy is reflected in its latest collection, Maya.

Daum’s fascination with marine life, explored in its early days with scenes inspired by the Nile, lakes, and mountains, deepens with the Mer de Corail collection, launched in January 2021. This collection captures the beauty of coral reefs and marine creatures like seahorses and conch shells, venturing deep into the oceans.

This year, Daum expands its repertoire with the Maya collection, inspired by Riviera Maya in North-east Mexico and its surrounding natural splendour. The collection captures the essence of marine animals and waves, crystallised in a captivating dance. Daum has envisioned an impressive array of underwater scenes, featuring emblematic creatures such as stingrays, dolphins, platax fish, and seahorses, all seemingly frozen in time with exquisite detail.

The Maya collection begins with a focus on waves, our first encounter with the ocean. This theme is immortalised in a 54cm tall vase, cast in turquoise blue. Limited to 99 pieces, this prestigious magnum piece captures the realistic motion of rays gliding through the waves. Each vase takes nearly 500 hours to create, spending over 17 days in the kiln, making it a stunning introduction to the underwater world.

Continuing the marine theme, a large vase that combines dolphins and the undulating motion of waves is one to note. This design tradition harkens back to iconic collections from the 1990s. In this latest iteration, Daum presents a new interpretation in the form of a 34cm tall vase. The vase showcases a gradient from dark turquoise to white, with eight dolphins intricately integrated into the contours, seamlessly merging at the wave crests and revealed through colour transitions. Limited to 175 pieces, execution of this piece represents over 250 hours of craftsmanship, with each piece spending 17 days in the kiln.

Another standout is the centrepiece featuring three rays embellished with mother-of-pearl roundels. Crafted over 270 hours, this intensely blue piece is limited to just 175 pieces.

As the collection delves deeper into the ocean, familiar creatures like seashells and fish emerge in crystalised forms. A 30cm seashell vase, adorned with six mother-of-pearl accents, shines in subtle shades of blue and white. Crafted using plaster sculpting, this limited-edition piece required 290 hours of meticulous craftsmanship.

The series also includes three platax fish – one small model in light blue and yellow, and two medium models in yellow and blue, and blue and green. These pieces reveal a poetic dialogue between fish and aquatic plants, a delicate blend of fauna and flora that is a hallmark of Daum’s DNA.

Daum reimagines iconic marine animals with the Maya collection, elevating sea-inspired masterpieces through its mastery of ancient and complex crystal-making techniques. The timeless muse of the ocean continues to inspire Daum’s workshop, just as it has for over 140 years, and when you invite it into your space, you’re adding the wonders and fantasy of the underwater along with it.

(Images: Daum)

This article was first published in Prestige Singapore