This crystal wine glass is one of a pair I discovered shortly after moving to Paris while wandering through the Voltaire neighbourhood in the city's 11th arrondissement with my friend Madeleine. She introduced me to a local brocante that felt more like an Emmaüs than an antique shop, where everyday objects were stacked without hierarchy. Among them, these two glasses immediately stood out. Although they were among the most expensive pieces in the shop, I knew they would come home with me. Four years later, without planning it, I bought my first apartment only a few streets away, making Voltaire my own neighbourhood. Looking back, these glasses feel like one of my earliest encounters with the life I would eventually build there.

They quickly became my everyday wine glasses. During the years I lived alone in Paris, one of them sat beside my computer almost every evening while I dedicated myself to my artistic practice. It became part of a ritual I rarely questioned: a chilled glass of white wine accompanying hours of writing, editing, researching, designing, and imagining. Many of the projects that would later shape my artistic career were conceived with this glass quietly by my side. It has witnessed countless nights of concentration, doubt, excitement, and discovery. Despite its fragility, I have never stopped using it. I have always believed that the objects we love most should participate in our everyday lives. Beauty, for me, is something to live with—day after day, until it becomes inseparable from who we are.