Big Spenders Drop $105,629 on a Bar Tab in One Night at The Cavalli Club, Dubai.

A receipt (shown above) from designer Roberto Cavalli's Club in Dubai's Fairmont Hotel, the Cavalli Club, dated January 2, which totalled $105,629, (AED 387,988) was published on social media sites Twitter and Facebook on Wednesday and has been spreading around the internet like... well, champagne.


above: Designer Roberto Cavalli

The Cavalli Club was created by renowned designer Roberto Cavalli and hosts an Italian contemporary restaurant, sushi bar, wine and champagne bar, cocktail and cigar lounge and a boutique shop, all encased within black quartz and a six meter high Swarovski crystal curtains.



The bill, for a birthday party, from the exclusive club included a six-litre bottle of Cristal Champagne for $35,000.



above: The 6 liter bottle of Cristal has been dubbed "the Methuselah"

Also on the bill were a couple of two-litre bottles of Cristal costing $19,000, 24 Diet Cokes at $6 a piece and 10 Red Bulls at $7.80 each, One 3 liter bottle of Cavalli vodka for $1,341 and four bottles of Chivas for $1,181.

The only food listed was a small birthday cake costing $32.67

Staff say the high spend is a regular occurrence in the club, with an average of 24 tables a year spending between $54,448.44 (AED 200,000) and $136,121.68 (AED 500,000) in a single evening. “Despite individuals and businesses feeling the effects of the downturn throughout 2011, Cavalli Club has seen high-spenders consistently frequent the venue,” said David Lescarret, operations manager at Cavalli Dubai.

“Last year saw an average of two tables per month spend between $54,448.44 (AED 200,000) to $136,121.68 (AED 500,000) in one night, and we expect this trend to continue into the New Year, with one customer already having spent just under $108,896.87 (AED 400,000).”

More images of the Cavalli Club:





The luxurious nightclub said it stocks the most expensive champagne in the world - the Louis Roederer, Millennium Cristal Brut 1990, priced at a massive $136,121.68 (AED 500,000) for a single bottle. There are only two other Millennium bottles for sale around the globe according to bar managers, which can be found in London and New York.

Cavalli Club opened in Dubai in the Fairmont Hotel in May 2009, after Beirut-based investment company Pragma Group inked a deal with the Italian fashion designer to obtain the franchise rights for the brand.

info and images courtesy of Cavalli Club and of Arabianbusiness.com

Clever and Creative C-Notes. Redesign the $100 Bill at Make Your Franklin.

above: the 100$ bill redesigned by Sean Fermoyle

Make Your Franklin is an online community art project devised by French designers Vincent Desdoigts, Martin Joubert and Etienne Lecorre, that allows anyone to design their own version of the United States 100$ bill. They are asking for you to recreate the money with a symbol of modern society.

All you have to do is download the template (a gigantic jpeg of the C-note) and start designing. Then you can upload your finished Benjamin to their online gallery. They simply ask that it be no larger than 7300 x 3000 pixels and no smaller than 1000 x 411 pixels.



above: bills with popular iconography like Paul Stanley's KISS make-up and Leonardo DaVinci's Mona Lisa, by Molle William and Loic Bel respectively, were amongst the designs submitted

Some people have gone all out and created viable and beautiful alternatives to the paper currency, while others (myself included) just had some fun defacing ol' Mr. Franklin with icons and imagery reflective of trendy and popular culture (e.g Disney, Mona Lisa, KISS, etc).

Here's a few of the bill redesigns from their online gallery, selected at the time this post was written. I'm sure many more terrific designs have since been submitted.

First, some seriously beautiful redesigns of the $100 bill:

Alexandre Manet Pikartzo:

Christelle Mozzati:

Julien Benayt:

Hugo Lecrux:

Arinin Evgeny:


And some funny money:

Two versions of Mickey Money by Didier Gerardin:


Paul Schuler gave it a complete Khadafi overhaul:
A Pink Floyd reference from Thomas Fontaine:

An homage to Darth Vader by Sylvain Weiss:

Agathe Teubner brings the American Eagle to life:

Some colorful currency from Martin Joubert:

Cedric Bariou asks Why So Serious? with his joker version:
Dekker Dryer's Monopoly Money:

Superhero C-note from Arlam:

Wasted Rita's take on a song we all know:

Vivien Cormier's illustrated version:

Fabio Maiorana cleverly gave Ben some time off:

and Cabanes' toxic money:

Bouton Bleue punks it up:

and a lovely minimal take on it from Burkhardthauke:

My own lame contribution to the project:


Give it a try or just view the gallery of submitted designs at Make your Franklin.

Johnny Swing Turns Cold Hard Cash & Currency Into Furniture & Textiles. Literally.

A trained sculptor and licensed welder, 49 year old Vermont-based artist Johnny Swing, an alumnus of Skidmore College and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture uses found materials and objects to repurpose into art, furniture and more.


above: artist and welder Johnny Swing on his Nickel couch

With a vast amount of work to his credit, it's his American coin-soldered furniture and paper currency printed objects I want to share with you today. Below are several angles, images and information pertaining to his soldered coin furniture followed by some of his textile objects made with dollar printed fabrics.

The Nickel Couch, 2006:


His second in his series of furniture made from coins, the nickel couch is comprised of 7,000 nickles, 35,000 welds, and a substructure of stainless truss work utilizing 350 feet of stiffening rods. 80"wide x 42"deep x 28.5" high and weighs 125 pounds.




above: Swing's Nickel Couch, 2001, fetched over $100,000 at auction at Sotheby in December of 2009.

Quarter Lounge, 2008:

Quarters and stainless steel, 96 x 47 x 28 inches



Half Dollar Butterfly Chair, 2009:


The third in his series of coin furniture, the Butterfly chair, reveals an exposed substructure and is made of 1,500 half dollar coins and 7,000 welds. 46"wide x 32"deep x 34" high and weighs 58 lbs.




The Quarter Chair:


The fourth in his series of coin pieces, the Quarter chair has an hourglass shape and is made from approximately 1,200 quarters. The shape and proportion are that of traditional diningroom furniture. 21" wide x 24" deep x 36" high and weighs 28 lbs.





The Loose Change Chair:


The fifth in the series of coin furniture, this was inspired by the childhood game Booby Trap. The substructure is created from technology shared from airplane wing design; it flexes to the ground but is torsionally rigid to accommodate thousands of pounds.




The Quarter Stool:


Nickel Bowl:
His bowls are an effort to play with other shapes that force the constrained circular coin into complex forms and patterns similar to mosque screens and Native American woven baskets.


All The Kings Men, 2010:


One of his most recent pieces, All the Kings Men is a curved settee with soldered open framework underside made of half dollars and stainless steel and measures 97" x 52" x 28" inches.






As Kiera Scholten reported for Artworks Magazine about his Coin series in 2008:

When he began using coins, Swing says it wasn’t simply about money as a material-”it was about taking what was a useless piece of money and kind of making it special again.” With this idea in mind he constructed his first piece out of pennies. What many consider America’s most disposable piece of coinage suited his purpose perfectly. Swing was happy with his first piece, which he modeled after a Bertoli chair, but using the pennies became a problem. After 1981 pennies were made with zinc, which caused them to disintegrate when welded together. Finding thousands of pennies dating before Reagan took office made an already labor-intensive process even more of a chore.
So he moved on to nickels. He’s now created 20 nickel couches, each assembled using about 7,000 of the Jefferson coins-that’s $350. His half-dollar chair utilizes about 1,500 coins, or $750. The price of these pieces, though, is much more than face value. You would have to save a lot of five-cent pieces to afford the couch made of them. An original Johnny Swing Nickel Couch can be had for upwards of $50,000. But the price pays for a painstaking process; for one couch it takes more than 300 hours to complete the 35,000 welds that hold all the coins together.
Welding coins together simply to sit on them may seem like a strange concept, and some critics are quick to classify Swing’s work as “bad boy art” under the assumption that he’s defacing money by using it in this manner. At first, even Swing wasn’t sure if his art was illegal, though his original answer was that “the government doesn’t care if you use their objects in art; they’re sort of flattered.” He soon thought he had better check it out to be certain, so he called the Secret Service, which at the time was a part of the U.S. Treasury. “They said, ‘It’s your money, do with it what you want,’” says Swing. “The agent told me the rumor that destroying money is illegal is just an old wives’ tale to keep kids from putting coins on the railroad tracks.” Swing could breathe a sigh of relief and move ahead with his work.

In addition to using coins, he has also created the following pieces using fabric printed with US Currency.

Piggy:



Teddy Bear:


Throw pillow:

By the way, you can purchase the Dollar Teddy ($1,250.00) and the Butterfly Coin chair ($59,000.00) here at Vivre.

all images courtesy of the artist