Davdesain was commissioned to design an extraordinary wedding gift for a Chinese client. The recipient was a powerful, established man of humble origins, small in stature. The eldest of nine siblings, the groom-to-be had been the driving force of his family since childhood, marked by a rigour, discipline and effort that made him the influential entrepreneur he is today.

The concept had to represent an unexpected, surprising power, concentrated in a segment of compressed matter with an unpredictable visual impact. The Laocoon of the Vatican Museums, finely carved using waterjet technique in Calacatta gold marble, is topped by an ovoid platform in black tempered crystal. Silently bearing the weight of life with majesty and discretion, Davdesain designed a bespoke table to celebrate the sense of family that has guided this man’s entire existence.

Like Laocoon, he remains immobile, prodigious and unstoppable in the face of life’s upheavals and hardships, never yielding. The message of protection arrives as clear as crystal, carved on a rock-crystal plaque at the base of the marble pedestal. “Love is a ladder on which the gods descend to us and we rise up to them.”