BLOG IN A BOTTLE

If you like to enjoy a hot drink on your journey to work in the morning, take a look at these stunning double-walled glass bottles. Aquaovo specifically thought of tea drinkers when developing their flask. Simply place your tea in the space under the lid, and add boiling water to the container. When you are ready for a fresh brew, just invert the bottle to mix the water with the tea leaves. Stylish, practical and brewed perfectly to your taste!

The double-wall of glass helps to insulate the liquids inside, keeping them warmer (or colder) for longer than containers made from other materials. The outer layer of glass stays at room temperature, ensuring the bottle is easy to hold and preventing condensation from forming. And as they are made of glass, the contents are not tainted by the packaging.

The bottles produced by Silodesign are designed more for the table. Cold drinks, hot sauces, or even soup can be stylishly served from these beautiful containers. And the contents will taste just as the chef intended!

“Anyone can do anything with a million dollars. Look at Disney. But it takes more than money to make something out of nothing, and look at the fun I have doing it,” Grandma Prisbrey.

Despite her hard life, it is easy to suspect that Tressa ‘Grandma’ Prisbrey must have been a lot of fun. In 1956, at the age of 60, Prisbrey began to construct a structure to house her collection of pencils in Simi Valley California. Made of glass bottles which she found at the local dump, the small building she constructed eventually housed more than 17,000 pencils.

That was just the beginning. Over the following three years Prisbrey constructed another 12 colourful bottle houses to contain her various collections (including one containing dolls’ heads). The result is now known as Grandma Prisbrey’s Bottle Village. Prisbrey continued constructing with empty bottles, adding walls, wishing wells, sculptures and planters.

Grandma Prisbrey was enormously proud of the Bottle Village and happily escorted visitors on tours. She also began to find recognition as an artist and her works featured in a number of exhibitions. The Village remained Grandma Prisbrey’s home until 1982, when at the age of 86 she moved to live with her daughter.

In the early 1980s, the Village was declared a Californian state landmark. However, in early 1994 the Village was struck by a 6.7 magnitude earthquake which caused serious damage. Despite being added to the US National Register of Historic Places in 1996, funding for repairs has been limited and the future of the village remains uncertain. Yet it remains as a testament to the courage and willpower of an amazing lady who made something truly beautiful with nothing more than recycled glass.

If you’re around California over the holidays we recommend it as a must-see. Maybe you will hear Grandma Prisbrey whistling as the wind passes over the open bottles!

In a bid to set itself apart in the crowded Australian beer market, Carlton United Brewers has adopted a revolutionary embossed bottle for the company’s Victoria Pale Lager. It is currently Australia’s only beer with a fully-embossed label.

The technology used to create the embossing was also behind an internally embossed ‘vortex’ bottle developed for Miller Lite in the US and for New Zealand brewer Tui. MillerCoors believes the innovative bottle design was behind a 6% increase in sales of Miller Lite. Gage Roads Brewing from Australia is also now using the internal vortex on its Wahoo line.

Carlton United’s marketing team were so excited by prototypes of the new design, they accepted it immediately. The company believes that the striking glass packaging will provide consumers with an impression of premium quality, at little additional expense for the beer maker.

What do you think of this new invention? Share your opinion on our Facebook page.

Each year Evian releases a new collectible glass bottle in time for the holiday season. This year’s edition has been designed by the French fashion label Courrèges to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the company’s founding.

The elegant and stylish limited-edition bottle will really add class to any festive table. Inspired by a playful white and pink dress, originally designed by Courrèges in the 1960s, the bottle has been deliberately styled to show the transparency and purity of the water inside.

Evian were so impressed with the result that they agreed to change the colour of their logo on the bottle to the hot pink selected by Courrèges.

The 2012 bottle joins previous bottle designs by Paul Smith, Issey Miyake, Christian Lacroix and Jean Paul Gaultier. All are now highly collectible, but which one is your favourite?

2008: Christian Lacroix

2009: Jean-Paul Gaultier

2010: Paul Smith

2011: Issey Miyake

2012: Courrèges

We still love the Issey Miyake. We drank the water but now we fill it with pretty flowers instead! And how about you?

The 55th Venice Biennale is in full swing and this year’s edition again features the highly popular Glasstress exhibition. Started at the 2009 Biennale, Glasstress brings together artists, architects and designers who want to creatively express their thoughts and ideas through glass.

One of the contributors this year is singer, producer and designer Pharrell Williams who has created these amazing glass skeletons. Titled Inside Out, inspiration for the works came from Williams’ good friend Dr Ramachadrian of the University of California, San Diego who said: “Apes reach for fruit while man reaches for the stars.” As Williams explains: “I wanted to take on the more difficult challenge: how?”

Williams reached back to his childhood obsession with angels (“Seemingly human with wings”) to answer the question.

A meeting with Venice Projects, one of the finest glass blowing workshops in Murano, led to the creation of the angels. “It was important for it to represent what the inside body of an angel (Greek for the word messenger) looked like,” explains Williams. “The blowers captured exactly how I saw these angels in my mind. I am beyond pleased and impressed with the results.” Two sculptures were created. One is life size while the other is 45 cm in height.

The angels are on display at the Berengo Centre for Contemporary Art and Glass in Murano until 27 November 2011.

Carol Milne is a glass artist, and a knitter, who is based in Seattle, USA. Until recently, the idea of combining her two artistic passions had never occurred to her. Inspiration came when Milne noticed some strands of sprue wax lying around her studio. To Milne, the wax strands seemed to be an ideal material to knit with and she began to experiment.

The results are amazing one-off knitted glass pieces. In an article in Fiberarts® magazine, Milne explains the process involved in building each piece. She also discusses her artistic motivation: “These are beautiful objects, but they are also metaphors. They speak to the fragility of life and to the tendency to judge based on appearance versus practicality. Perhaps most importantly, I see my knitted work as a metaphor for social structure. Individual strands are weak and brittle on their own but deceptively strong when bound together.”

Dominic Wilcox is a British artist who is on a mission to reveal the hidden surprises that can be found in the everyday things that surround us. His latest work is a series of miniature watch sculptures which portray simple moments in time.

Wilcox has created tiny figures which are attached to the second and hour hands of vintage watches. The entire scene is encapsulated in a glass dome. Each dome was custom-made by Wearside Glass Sculptures at the UK’s National Glass Centre in Sunderland. “I spent time thinking about the relationship between the two people, how one passes another repeatedly and I tried to think about when that situation happens in real life or in an imagined scenario,” explains Wilcox on his website.

The seven scenes he has created range from two children playing hide-and-seek, to a looter stealing a television set during the recent London riots. The sculptures are being exhibited at Dezeen Space in London until 16 October 2011, but you can also enjoy them via the intriguing video that Wilcox has created:

Which one is your favourite? Why not let us know via our Facebook page.

In Australia, Fathers Day falls on the first Sunday in September. This year the Novak Agency, a real estate broker in the northern Sydney suburb of Dee Why, set aside 12 shop windows where people could leave messages of love for their fathers. So reported the Manly Daily.

Each glass window was backed with white paper and fluorescent markers were attached to the front. Within hours, three of the windows were filled with messages of love for fathers in a range of languages. People even took photos of their messages to create special Fathers Day cards for their dads.

Would you write a message on a window for your dad and what would it be? Why not use the Friends of Glass Facebook page as your window to the world?

We always thought that a shrub was a small bush or tree. But it turns out that it is also a Persian word for a syrup that contains citrus juice and fruit. Camper English, a cocktail and spirits blogger at Alcademics, recently took a class in creating shrubs. It turns out they are very simple and easy to make!

You just need some sealable glass jars and a selection of berries, fruit, herbs and spices to fill them. (Check out our post on herb-infused vodkas for some flavour combination ideas.). Cover the contents of the jar with warm fruit- or wine-vinegar. Leave for a week, shaking now and again to disturb the fruit and allow the liquid to circulate.

After a week you strain the mixture and discard the fruit. Return the syrup to the jar, add sugar, seal and place it in the fridge for a week. The exact amount of sugar you will need depends on the fruits you have used so remember to taste! Don’t add too much – the mix will become a little sweeter as it matures in the fridge.

After a week you have the perfect syrup base for a cordial, or you can use your shrub as a mixer in cocktails. Strawberry shrub and champagne sounds like the perfect summer treat to us! As always, we’d love to see your flavour combinations and the results, so why not share them on the Friends of Glass Facebook page?

Renowned glass artist Dale Chihuly is celebrating his 70^th birthday in 2011 with a new exhibition at the LongHouse Reserve gallery in New York state. And to celebrate the gallery’s 20^th anniversary, Chihuly will create a glass sculpture that will remain on display at the LongHouse permanently.

Chihuly started working with glass during his studies at the University of Washington. After graduating in 1965 he continued his studies at the University of Wisconsin and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). He later established the glass studies programme at RISD and taught there for over ten years.

In 1968 Chihuly moved to Venice where he worked in the Venini glass factory. There he first observed the team approach to glass blowing which still influences his work today.

The current exhibition at the LongHouse continues Chihuly’s fascination for combining glass and gardens. Since 2001 he has held a number of exhibitions in botanical settings.