Madame Clicquot is now known to have been a daring woman in the way she built up the Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin business in its earliest days. In The Widow Clicquot we read of the widow (veuve) Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin advising a grandchild to "…invent the things of tomorrow…", and to "Act with audacity." In that spirit it seems, the house of champagne with its distinctive yellow livery, continues to push the boundaries with design for packaging and accessories.

Andrée Putman, who designed a boutique hotel bearing her name in Central, had earlier created champagne presentation boxes that turn into ice buckets, while Karim Rashid designed a champagne cooler (Globalight) with an LED light that gives a soft glow, while the bubbly stays chilled for a few hours. It was introduced early last year. Karim also created the Loveseat for the brand.

Drawing on the talent at Porsche Design Studio, the house of champagne has now launched the Veuve Clicquot Ice  Cube. The portable ice bucket with a metallic handle includes four champagne flutes. And the ice jacket has been refined further with textured nylon cover and a leather belt to fasten it once the jacket is zipped up. Veuve Clicquot says the champagne will stay at its ideal temperature for two hours.

The Traveller, meanwhile, has been turned into a fashion accessory with a chocolate brown shoulder strap. It can also be used as a weekend bag by removing the isotherm inserts, Veuve Clicquot suggests. The ice cube has a HK$1,000 tag and will retail at Watson’s Wine Cellars from this month.

Creatures of the Earth and of the oceans, have continued to provide inspiration for Rene Lalique – the fish in particular, being a favourite muse. In this latest gold lustre collection, Lalique is combining the precious metal, a symbol of fortune for the Chinese, with crystal, which represents luxurious elegance in the West.

Inspired by the fish motif and influenced by Japanese and Chinese culture, he has created many signature pieces over the years, including the fish seal in 1913, and the “Roscoff’’ bowl in 1932. The 335 millimetre bowl, to be made available in November, features engraved impressions of water droplets while sparkling fish form a frieze around the bowl. It truly captures the underwater world, and brings crystal to life.

Other sentimental masterpieces include the double fish and Carp figures.  The "Double Fish" depicts a pair of fish in satin-finished crystal springing out of the water, while the "Carp" (in gold lustre, HK$19,800) leaps whirling out of the water upon the crest of a wave, complemented by the delicate scale details. Both successfully capture the striking movement of the fish in a natural undersea scene.

Animal: Motifs - Symbols of good fortune

A rose gold self-winding watch with a guilloché pattern and a chart that displays the northern hemisphere’s sky at night indicating how stars progress relative to the meridian passage of Sirius, as well as portraying phases of the moon, will end on a collector’s vault or the wrist of an admirer of rare complications, this month.

The Celestial, crafted by Patek Philippe is up for auction at the Only Watch 09 auction at the Monaco Yacht Show, on the 24th of this month.

The complex astronomical displays in the Celestial rely on a system of stacked sapphire crystal discs, which rotate at different speeds and create an impression of depth. The celestial background is a blue sapphire crystal disc on a wheel with 279 teeth. This disc reproduces the orbit of the moon. Via a planetary gear train, it also drives a subsidiary sapphire crystal disc depicting the waxing and waning of the moon in a small round aperture.

Above it, on a wheel with 356 teeth, is a transparent sapphire crystal disc, which bears the sky chart on one side and an image of the Milky Way galaxy on the other. These three discs are protected by the sapphire crystal glass with an ellipse on the inside that frames the portion of the sky visible above Geneva.