La Ruche Impériale – 160th anniversary of the Guerlain’s Bee bottle

9 Masters of Art celebrate the 160th anniversary of the mythical Bee bottle.

The bees have escaped from the whirlwind of time to become an eternal signature of the Guerlain luxury perfume house. This year the mythic Guerlain’s Bee perfume bottle celebrates its 160th anniversary. Pierre-François-Pascal Guerlain created Eau de Cologne Impériale for Empress Eugénie, in a bottle decorated with a myriad of bees, hand-gilded with fine gold.

For the milestone, Guerlain and the French National Institute of Arts and Crafts have chosen nine Maîtres d’art to create a piece inspired by the Bee bottle. If you are in Paris, pay a visit to this unique exhibition at 68 Champs-Elysées.

To commemorate the 160th anniversary of the perfume bottle, the Maître d’art Lison de Caunes has created “Le Théâtre”: a wooden altar in the shape of the Bee bottle representing the stage of a classical theatre.

Laurent Nogues, a master of embossed printing, hot marking and inlay techniques on paper, celebrates the 160th anniversary of the Bee flacon through “La Ruche Impériale” – a precious box-shaped compartment, composed of six panels wrapped in white paper, embossed with a detailed honeycomb pattern.