OMAR SARTAWI
The iconic Bee Bottle revisited by Inkman, an exclusive art piece museum-worthy.
1. Tell us about how your passion for food started, and how did you decide to become a chef?
Nature is my true artist always … I had the false believe that we are indestructible as the human race then when corona hit it made me realise how vulnerable we are and how we must respect and protect our planet and nature … That’s when I started focusing on sustainability more by using my skills from different fields in my life journey when after ENG design I become a chef and studied food science in Harvard online course which gave me the tools to create a new technique to preserve the skins of vegetables and fruits and make durable leather out of it and using that waste to create high end luxurious furniture & fashion.
The process is finding a new use to the main purpose of the skins of the fruits… the skins were originally created by nature so it protects the sugar (energy) inside the fruit… I have developed a new technique using both ancient mayans culture combined with modern French cooks techniques to avant garde molecular gastronomy techniques…
It s a new fresh prospective where we can use the whole of the skin to make it timeless and beautiful as it ages naturally.. it’s a unique material where each skin would ages differently hence having a unique color and texture.
Imagine how much materials we would have if we sold oranges & lemons without the skin .
I was lucky enough to work with amazing designers like “the duck a l’orange” orange peel table where I worked with architect Karim Sawalha and our table will be displayed in dubai design week 2022 in collaboration with architect ghada Kunash.. Another application was with a great Bahraini designer Noof Alshekar where we worked for two years with a great fabricator in Lebanon to creat and orange peels leather bag with gold plated brass and a hand carved malachite stone from India and the bag was displayed in expo 2020 dubai twice as part of al burda festival and second time as part of the Jordanian
pavilion and later it was exhibited at Fann Aporter art gallery in dubai. It is still at a prototype and a proof of concept at this stage.
Also I did aubergine leather masks for dubai fashion week and we did an installation in dubai design week 2021 an evolution of a nomadic tent made out of aubergine skin.
At this stage it’s only a proof of concept… so costs are expensive and they are being sold as art limited edition pieces but later on I am looking at scaling it up and working with local communities to empower and find them jobs where they manufacture the material and i collaborate with international architects & designers to creat high end luxury items from food waste. And working with luxurious brands & restaurants across the world to manifest food waste into a new creation and giving it a new life.
2. Is there one food that you’re secretly obsessed with having at home?
We in the Middle East have very exotic ingredients like in dubai we have yagat which is a very special ingredient… In Jordan we have something called Jameed which is dehydrated fermented yogurt and it’s used for our national dish.. I was hired for Amman design week 2016 to create a new manifestation to our culture where I merged Jameed with white chocolate to creat a new product called Jameed chocolate that has been all over the world .
3. What kinds of ethnic food do you think are underrated right now?
Arabic food for sure … the last food trend has been Asian inspired Peruvian food … Me and some great friends and chefs around the world are doing modern Arabic food to take it to new levels and show it to the world ..
4. Tell us about your first creation “Jameed Chocolate“, and how does it express the Jordanian Culture?
Have beautiful projects with some of the most luxurious brands in the world suck as Shangrila Dubai, The Ritz Carlton, luxurious cars and luxurious watches Swiss brand.
5. What is a piece of advice you would you give to beginners in the food art industry?
Foods art is a new genre in art … before it was someone carving on a watermelon Ior someone playing nice but now it’s more of using food as a medium rather it being the final product.
Since it’s a new genre my advice to anyone entering this field is you must have faith and thick skin cause it will take sometime for people to see it relative.
It is an exceptional encounter, of the kind only Guerlain can orchestrate: the meeting of East and West. And the meeting of two arts: French perfumery, to which the House offered so many masterpieces, and Arabic calligraphy, an age-old art reinvented by a young artist for the 21stcentury. Ever since it was founded in 1828, the love of perfume and the love of art have been one and the same for Guerlain. Today, as ever, the House is proud to host new artists and craftspeople with exceptional skills, giving them a blank canvas to enchant its fragrances. In 2022, Inkman, a young Tunisian calligraphy artist, has been invited by Guerlain to create the adornment of its iconic Bee Bottle. Inspired by Le Songe de la Reine, an exclusive fragrance offered in the one-litre flacon, this jeweller’s son has imagined an adornment that is both poetic and spectacular, between sculpture and calligraphy.
Voluptuous shapes, graceful curves, soaring lines... In a bold artwork that weaves stylised Arabic characters with Guerlain’s “G”, Inkman has turned the emotion of the scent into a visual poem. To craft this exceptional piece, made to measure foreach bottle, the House has called on the legendary Parisian jeweller Goossens, a symbol of French savoir-faire. Like the calligraphic jewel that magnifies its bottle, the vibrant, luminous, and deep Eau de Parfum composed by Guerlain Master Perfumer Thierry Wasser carries us off to the threshold of the East. Le Songe de la Reine, an exclusive composition, draws its inspiration from the Mediterranean world where the cultures of East and West have met for millennia. An olfactory and aesthetic masterpiece limited to26 pieces worldwide, Inkman for Guerlain is art in the service of art.
“Calligraphy is the language of the soul. We feel emotions before understanding the letters. It is a portal to a magical world” says the Tunisian calligraphy artist.
Born in 1990, Inkman studied graphic design at the École Supérieure des Sciences et Des Technologies Du Design in Tunis. It was there that he discovered typographical design and started exploring the artistic expressions it could inspire. A practice he developed alongside poetry, which he has been composing since childhood. It was on the walls of his city that Inkman created his first “calligraffiti”. A match between the urban energy of street art and one of the most refined aesthetic traditions of the Arabic culture: calligraphy, which turns writing into abstract art whose geometry verges on the sublime...With these openair creations accessible to all, the young artist magnifies the architectural beauty of buildings he paints on, the rich history their walls hold, and the many civilisations that have shaped, over the centuries, the streets he adorns with his art. Shifting from walls to canvas, Inkman creates paintings whose voluptuous
lines interweave arabesques with Latin characters. On them, poems composed by the artist in English or French, bearing messages of tolerance, can be read in the form of Arabic calligraphy. Mediterranean at heart, anchored in his cultural roots, the artist has forged a formal vocabulary that crosses the barriers of cultures and language. From Tunis to Dubai by way of London or Doha, Inkman’s language is as universal and as emotional as perfume. Today, Inkman works in three dimensions: after murals and paintings, he gives body to his work through sculpture. The artist draws his inspiration from the sense of touch which transports the soul, the human feelings he perceives in people’s eyes, or his interaction with his environment. The practice of sculpture has allowed Inkman to revisit his roots. The son of a jeweller, he reinvents his artistic approach in the family workshops where he imagines, designs and crafts jewels as an ode to beauty. A sensibility that enabled him to embrace the world of Guerlain, a House that is especially dear to him, since his wife wears one of its fragrances...
Sensuous and abstract, avant-garde and timeless, poetic and bold. For Guerlain, Inkman has created an artwork whose beauty is undeniable. Dazzling. Absolute. A jewel that wraps around the body of the mythical Bee Bottle produced by Pochet du Courval, the historical glass maker of the House since 1853.And more than a jewel, a meeting between two of the creative worlds that are most emblematic of the East: calligraphy and perfume. To create his artwork, Inkman steeped himself in the scent of Le Songe de la Reine. His gleaming calligraphic jewel reflects the voluptuous forms, graceful curves, and vibrant character of the fragrance composed by Thierry Wasser, Guerlain Master Perfumer. Like scented volutes, the elegant lines that embrace the Bee Bottle trace sinuous designs drawn from Arabic writing. Reinvented in golden arabesques, Guerlain’s “G” shimmers like a mirage... The eye loses itself endlessly in the abstract lines of this magnificent composition, whose splendour is as tactile as it is visual. A genuine visual poem that celebrates the harmony of scent and beauty, of content and container. Here, two arts echo and magnify one another: the sculptor’s and the perfumer’s. “It is a highly contrasted fragrance that confronts the force and sensuality of woods with the vegetal vibration of fig-tree sap” says Thierry Wasser, Guerlain Master Perfumer.
An exclusive fragrance accompanies this exceptional creation: Le Songe de la Reine. The Queen’s Dream. An olfactory journey to the Mediterranean lands where the cultures of the East and West met and mingled over the centuries. A land that is Inkman’s, born in Tunisia. And if the young artist was able to translate so brilliantly the olfactory writing of the fragrance into a calligraphic jewel, it is because both these artworks share a similar streamlined, yet sensual, aesthetic. The solar radiance of gold. The fruits of the Mediterranean sun illuminate the top notes of the fragrance, like a vertical, soaring beam of light: sparkling mandarin, and Guerlain’s signature, glittering bergamot. The citrus fruit known as the « Green Gold » of Calabria, sourced from the House’s partner for three generations, unfolds zesty, herbaceous, and floral facets made more vibrant still by the freshness of pink pepper.
The sensual delight of fruit. In the heart of the fragrance, the Master Perfumer has traced the generous curves of a fig accord picked in a Mediterranean garden. The sinuous lines of its odorous leaf, underlined by a green, herbaceous note. The tender milky sweetness of its sap. The refined sensuality of the accord is magnified by the regal silhouette of a beautiful iris, a precious flower that is also one of the House’s scented signatures. The streamlined elegance of woods. It is in the powdery trail of iris that Le Songe de la Reine reveals its Eastern roots with unctuous sandalwood – another of the House’s iconic ingredients. Native to India, it is now sourced in Australia. Produced from sustainable harvests since 2015, the essence of the legendary wood was selected by Thierry Wasser for an outstanding olfactory quality that meets Guerlain’s exacting standards. In Le Songe de la Reine, the enveloping tendrils of this white sandalwood are underlined by a vetiver sfumato. Cedarwood frames the curvaceous note with its straight, clean facets. A sumptuous composition traced with bold strokes of noble materials, like a fragrant wind blowing from a Mediterranean garden to the lands of the Arabian Nights.
A VIRTUOSIC PIECECRAFTED BY THE ATELIERS GOOSSENS
To bring to life the calligraphic jewel imagined by Inkman, Guerlain has turned to a French house that masters the craft of goldsmithery to perfection: the Parisian jeweller Goossens. A House founded in 1950 by Robert Goossens, a visionary craftsman whose couture jewels marked their era. Still today, the House constantly pushes the limits of creativity, through an unexpected mix of shapes and materials, associating noble and raw materials to create unique jewels with subtle nuances. In the hands of the master craftspeople of the Ateliers Goossens, the twenty-six precious copies of Inkman’s sculpture are made to measure for each bottle, using finely tuned skills. The first, high-precision step is to laser-cut the elegant lines of the decoration designed by Inkman out of a sheet of brass. Each piece is then meticulously polished, first with a bench polisher, then by hand, until every asperity has been perfectly smoothed. Then, the ornaments are meticulously shaped by hand to embrace the curves of the majestic Bee Bottle. Each of them becomes a one-off, bespoke piece. Then comes the step that will turn them into couture jewels: galvanisation. Four successive layers of metal cover the piece. First, warm-hued copper. Then, noble white bronze and silvery nickel. And finally, gold, whose precious glow exalts the calligraphy imagined by Inkman for Guerlain. Before leaving the Ateliers Goossens, the pieces are fastened to each bottle. Adorned with these dazzling jewels, the twenty-six Bee Bottles are then transported to the Ateliers Guerlain. The House’s fabled Dames de Table wind a fine golden thread around the neck.
The Bee Bottle by Inkman is a limited edition of 26 signed and numbered pieces worldwide.