Bethan Laura Wood reimagines Baccarat’s Zénith chandelier for collectors

Bethan Laura Wood’s Baccarat Zénith is the kind of chandelier you buy for a room you already care about. Baccarat’s U.S. catalog puts the line from a $375 Zénith Nomade lampshade and a $2,450 candlestick up to price-on-demand chandeliers, with a $9,300 wall unit and an $11,900 candelabra showing how the same house code scales from accent piece to full collector statement.

That code carries real weight. Baccarat says the house was founded in 1764 in eastern France and that its manufacture has stayed in the town of Baccarat for 260 years. The Zénith chandelier is traced to a mid-19th-century origin, inspired by an all-crystal chandelier created around 1850, and its signature red tassel is made by fusing clear crystal with 24-carat gold powder at 540 degrees. For a gift buyer, that is the difference between buying lighting and buying a piece with lineage built into it.

Wood did not erase that heritage. Her multidisciplinary studio has run since 2009, and she said she was drawn to Baccarat’s interest in the Zénith identity and the idea of the flower, which she wanted to combine into one cohesive piece. The sharpest move is structural: she kept the pinch that holds the Zénith arms together, then rotated it to a 90-degree angle, so the silhouette feels newly graphic without losing the chandelier’s classical skeleton.

Baccarat unveiled the collaboration during Milan Design Week in Brera, inside Emmanuelle Luciani’s immersive, sci-fi-inspired installation that mixed popular culture, heritage, science fiction and craftsmanship. That setting fits the object perfectly. Baccarat says Zénith has been continually reinvented through collaborations with leading international designers, and Wood’s version keeps the recognizable crystal language and red tassel while making the chandelier feel freshly acquired, which is exactly what serious interiors collectors want from a milestone piece.