Wynn Magazine - Las Vegas
Issue link: http://digital.greengale.com/i/149416
that's going to Wynn Cotai. It's an extraordinary late-18th/early-19th-century Italian chandelier in rock crystal that I'm designing a room around." Similarly, in Macau's Encore Tower, Thomas designed Bar Cristal around a French Empire chandelier he obtained in Brussels and suspended from the middle of the ceiling, complementing it with a cut-crystal door and mirror frames. "The entire bar niche is cut crystal," says Thomas. "Then all the glassware that we picked for the room was cut in a similar fashion to the chandelier, so it really informed the whole room." While the elegant Bar Cristal chandelier and its enormous crystal basket chandelier counterpart in Encore Macau's lobby are the only designs on the property lit from the exterior, they contrast with each other. "The one in the lobby is in a room that's white and imperial yellow, and the one in Bar Cristal is in a room darkly colored in mahogany against a dark ceiling," says Thomas. "We did very different things with them so that one wouldn't just look like a smaller version of the other one. One is in PHOTOGRAPHY BY BARBARA KRAFT (BAR CRISTAL, ENCORE LOBBY AND WYNN MACAU LOBBY) Thomas designed Bar Cristal around a French Empire chandelier he obtained in Brussels, complementing it with a cut-crystal door and mirror frames. a light room; one is in a dark room. One is a period silhouette that pours down from the ceiling; the other is a large shade that's up against the ceiling. Although they're both sources of sparkle and focus in the room, I think they're very different." The crystal basket chandelier has a story behind it as well. "I had designed a pair of chandeliers for the high-limit gaming area in Encore at Wynn Las Vegas that consisted of 15,000 three-inch multifaceted lead crystal balls," recalls Thomas. But the room's design plans mistakenly listed the chandelier as 750 pounds instead of 7,500, and when it came time to install it, the ceiling wasn't wired to hold such a massive weight, so Thomas quickly replaced the original balls with hollowed-out substitutes —and subsequently had 15,000 three-inch lead crystal balls to repurpose. Most of them were used for the crystal basket chandelier at Bar Cristal. Chandeliers are used throughout Encore Macau to create "rhythms" in walkways, or to "establish" rooms. "There are many beautiful chandeliers in the casino promenade that were realized by design firm Hirsch Bedner Associates," says Thomas. "Many of those are based on a light fixture originally made in silk by Mariano Fortuny, who was a Spaniard living and designing in Venice at the turn of the century. Ours are made in glass." HBA also designed chandeliers for Wynn Macau's retail promenade that resemble metal lattice baskets, while Thomas contributed the chandelier in Wynn Macau's lobby in Rubino red, which he notes as "the beginning of my falling in love with Rubino glass." Thomas would go on to create oversize Venetian fixtures in Encore at Wynn Las Vegas's casino. "It was kind of a coauthorship," he says. Then there are the chandeliers in Wynn Macau's Golden Flower restaurant, where resin teapots lit from within cover the ceiling. "The dining room is all Mariano Fortuny silk fixtures," says Thomas. "That was because Marco Polo was a Venetian who brought Asia to Europe. I figured I should bring Venice to Asia. I thought including the Mariano fixtures returned the favor." n opposite page, clockwise from far left: The Rubino glass chandelier in the Wynn Macau lobby; gemstones in the Crystal Basket chandelier that illuminates Encore Macau's lobby; the Bar Cristal chandelier at Encore Macau. WYNN 070-071_W_F_Macau_Fall13.indd 71 71 8/9/13 11:45 AM