Puiforcat unveils Kanmi, a sake set designed by Tomás Alonso

Puiforcat has unveiled Kanmi, a sake set designed by Spanish designer Tomás Alonso for the French silverware house. The collection comprises a carafe and four cups, each cut with a distinct silhouette, curved or rectilinear, and paired with a primary colored resin base set into the vessel.

Alonso built the set around the ritual of sharing sake and the drink's layered, delicate character. He told WWD he was not seeking tension or contrast so much as an element of surprise, describing the discovery of something additional inside the cup as it is brought closer to the lips.

That hidden detail, he said, is a quality he associates with Japan, where beverages are frequently served in vessels that reveal something extra on closer inspection. The name Kanmi means sweet flavor in Japanese, a nod to the drink the set is built to serve.

Alonso frames Kanmi as part of a broader shift in how people gather at the table, pointing to globalization as a force reshaping tablescapes. It pulls rituals like sake service into contexts far from where they began, prompting new forms to serve them.

What the collaboration costs and when it arrives

Items within the Kanmi set start at 800 euros. Puiforcat says the collection goes on sale online and in its own stores from the beginning of October, with a wider US launch, in stores and online, following in the first quarter of 2027.

A silversmith with two centuries of history

Puiforcat was founded in 1820 as a silversmith house and built its name on precious tableware before its reputation peaked during the Art Deco era, when its geometric silver forms became closely associated with the period's design language.

Hermès has owned Puiforcat since 1993, folding a two-century-old silversmith into a group whose own design language, precise, material-led and unshowy, runs through the maison's leather goods, its silk and its home collections alike.

Alonso is not a first-time collaborator with the Hermès orbit. He designed the Coulisse lamps for Hermès in 2019, inspired by paper dioramas, and followed them with the Pivot side tables, shown with Hermès at Milan Design Week in 2025.

Kanmi extends a run of outside collaborations Puiforcat has pursued as it widens beyond its own design studio. In 2025 the house released the Silver Set 2025, a drinking ensemble made with British artist Rachel Whiteread.

The house has also worked with design duo Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby on Pilotis, a candle collection, and with Turkish-Danish artist Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye on an array of bowls and vases produced under the Puiforcat name.

A further collaboration paired Puiforcat with the foundation of the late designer Donald Judd on a table service set, extending the house's roster of outside names into American minimalism as well as European design and fine art.

Taken together, the run of collaborations positions Puiforcat as a house using outside designers to keep a two-century-old silversmithing craft in active conversation with contemporary design, rather than treating its heritage as a fixed archive.

Where craft collaborations hold value

We have tracked house collaborations of this kind as part of our coverage of watches jewelry, where craft-driven objects made with named outside designers have tended to hold value differently than seasonal collections built purely around a brand's own studio output.

That same pattern shaped our reading of De Beers London's Vibrations collection, cut with diamond cabochons as its first high jewelry release, and of Neode's N01 First Edition, an architect-designed watch limited to 25 pieces: named designers, not house anonymity, carried both stories.

Puiforcat has not disclosed production numbers for Kanmi, nor has it said whether the set will be a standing catalog item or a limited run, leaving open how scarce the carafe and cup combination will actually be once it reaches stores.

For now, the confirmed details are the 800 euro price entry point, the October launch in Puiforcat's own channels and the first-quarter 2027 arrival in the United States, where the house will be counting on Alonso's growing profile with Hermès to carry the set.