It’s hard to believe that the world famous luxury brand that is Hennessy started out in a small village six miles east of Mallow. Killavulen, County Cork is where Richard Hennessy was born 300 years ago and after a spell in the British army, the military officer travelled to France where he became an officer in the Irish Brigade of the French army. He retired and eventually settled down in the Cognac region, where he began investing in its local alcoholic produce.
So began Maison Hennessy, distilling and exporting brandies, first to Britain and his native Ireland, closely followed by the United States. In 1813 Richard Hennessy’s son James Hennessy was responsible for choosing Jean Fillioux as the house’s Master Blender. A member of the Fillioux family has occupied the role ever since, a business relationship that has lasted eight generations and more than 250 years.
It’s a pivotal position in the Hennessy empire and with the 300th anniversary approaching, the brand wanted to salute this with a signature piece of art. In keeping with Hennessy’s continued support of avant-garde art and local partnerships across street fashion, art & music with the likes of Emporium, Dublin Block Party, the Future of Irish Music & Ireland’s rap duo Travis & Elzzz, they asked two of Ireland’s most dynamic contemporary creatives, Maser and Conor Harrington, to fashion their own blend of visual narrative for the celebratory bottle.
Maser’s work is well known to all Dubliners and beyond but Harrington less so. The Cork native began painting graffiti as a teenager and has since gone on to paint large scale murals around the world in locations such as London, Paris, New York, Miami, Sao Paulo and Mexico City. Now working exclusively in oils, Harrington’s large-scale paintings take reference from classical art, and are rooted in graffiti, examining themes such as masculinity, colonialism within its narratives. His work can be found in the collections of Anita Zabludowicz, Damien Hirst’s Murderme Collection as well as notable celebrities like Alicia Keyes and Sir Elton John.
It’s a big honour for the two artists so our editor John Brereton asked them about the approach, the process, the outcome and if working on a project like this fell within their aesthetic comfortably.
How did the brand approach you initially?
Conor: I got a DM and was baffled. I had to do some Googling just to make sure it was genuine but I was surprised to be honest. This is my first brand collaboration but I sensed it was a special one so I was open to it. Hennessy has a long tradition of working with artists in our genre, people like Shepard Fairey and Futura, so they are good supporters of the art world. I was still a bit unsure of what it was they wanted me to do but after more browsing I copped that a big anniversary was coming up so that got my creative juices stirred up, especially as we are the first Irish artists to do something on this scale and also that it’s celebrating a fellow Corkonian. It’s funny, a lot of people from Cork don’t realise that Richard Hennessy is from the county, and us being such humble folk (laughs) I’m shocked that we aren’t talking about it all the time.
Maser: It’s about 18 months since I first got the email from them but when I saw Hennessy and Conor’s name involved, I just thought “this is brilliant’. Our styles are miles apart but they have a lovely synergy when they sit together, they definitely compliment each other. Sometimes things look good on paper but they never hit that sweet spot but this worked from the get go.
C: I was out with Shepard Fairey during the week and he thought the campaign was really well thought out, because Hennessy is all about heritage and contemporary street culture. My style brings that historical facet to the project while Maser’s is very now and abstract, so our work reflects that two sided concept and ethos that Hennessy strive for.
How fast did the project progress after that initial contact?
C: Really fast. Two weeks after our first chats with the brand we were both whisked over to Cognac with our wives for an intense two day tour of the Maison, where they showed us the process from harvesting the grapes in the vineyard all the way through to the bottling. We stayed in the Chateau de Bagnolet, which is without doubt the best place I’ve ever stayed in my life. It’s been in the Hennessy family for over 250 years so they really immersed us in the culture and ethos of the brand, it was so interesting.
M: The service was unbelievable, they literally said to us we could have what we wanted when we wanted it, citing previous guests’ requests for a Playstation at 2am and other mad stuff. We really went all out and ordered a ham & cheese toastie! Joking aside, it was an enormously beneficial trip. We really felt like we were tracing Richard’s footsteps and I genuinely absorbed that whole experience and that became the foundation and inspiration for our work. It really framed it and gave it a theme and structure. We were also given a masterclass in brandy blending by the house master blender Renaud Fillioux de Gironde and it was an education just to see the level of detail and finesse that he applied to his craft.
C: They have a tasting committee of around 7 members and the whole production rests on their taste buds which was fascinating. They taste grapes from all the local suppliers and vineyards and check the distilling process at every step of the way, if there’s a barrel that’s ageing for five years they are tasting it every six months. What impressed me was that there seemed to be very little science going on. It was ultimately down to the taste buds of this select group of people. They are the Le Bron James of taste buds!
M: We chatted to him about the pandemic and obviously with one of the side effects of Covid being loss of taste they were terrified but, thankfully, because the area is so isolated none of the committee got the virus.
I’d imagine ideas were formulating in your heads while in this environment?
M: Absolutely, there was a wealth of visuals in that environment but in the end it all came back to that one theme of landscape, the spaces that Richard inhabited.
C: We also went to the ancestral home in Killavullen – the artwork is being hung there after the official launch – but it was also informative to walk around the house and grounds and absorb the Irish landscape. A lot of the colours we used in the piece reflected this landscape, mossy hues, greens, oranges and then balancing those with bright colours to bring that contemporary feel into the work.
M: We also went down into a cave on the grounds and there was a drink waiting for us in the depths. That was unexpected but really, the whole experience was lovely. Everyone was very accommodating.
How did the work commence?
C: I live and work in London so because I work in oil paints, which take weeks to dry, we housed the canvas in my studio and Maser would come over sporadically to layer up. He uses masking tape to get those sharp lines so the paint had to be totally dry before he could do anything over the oils. It took a few months from start to finish as there was a fair bit of management to the project but it was fairly seamless to be honest. We kept Hennessy in the loop at all times, sending them sketches etc so they knew what was going on throughout. As it is for worldwide consumption and display on stockists shelves there could be no surprises but they trusted us implicitly throughout the process.
Words: John Brereton
