DETAILS

Designed and built while I was a student at RISD, this vase is an homage to the repurposing of the wine-bottle-as-vase traditionally seen in French cafés. Here, it was deconstructed so that a single flower could be A: held and B: fed. The vertical planes of glass are the exact dimension of a standard Bordeaux wine bottle. Their interior faces have been frosted. The neck of a wine bottle has been repurposed, as has one segment of its body, the identical width of the neck. Both elements are sandwiched between the panes of glass, to hold the neck and base of the flower. When wet, the frosted areas become transparent, revealing the bottom of the stem, while the rest of the flower remains obscured and in fact accentuated by its shadows. Only the bloom of the flower is visible in full, while the natural curvature of the flower’s stem creates a pleasing contrast with the rigid linearity of the vase’s sides.

Heat-strengthened float glass & wine bottle

Built: Mock-up and Prototype: v1.0 1989 / v2.0 2000