In 2021, when squiggles and wiggles took over the home design landscape, glassware was no exception: Zigzagging stems and wobbly silhouettes became regular fixtures on Instagram tablescapes that wholeheartedly embraced whimsy. More recently, the trend has leaned even more surreal, even into the grotesque.
Now, more and more glassware looks like it’s melting, dripping, or wilting into the surface of whatever table it’s perched upon. Take the home categories of high-end retailers like SSENSE and Moda Operandi, filled with deliriously wonky glasses that look like they could function as contemporary sculptures. Brightly colored glasses from RiRa, aptly named the “Addled” series, which look as if a child molded them clumsily out of clay. Coupes from Completed Works collapse and drip all over themselves—pooling at the base like melted wax globbed at the bottom of a pillar candle. Highball glasses from the MoMA Design Store appear to be defying gale-force winds in real time, careening permanently to the left. Meanwhile, these Bormiolo Rocco glasses designed by Ross Lovegrove look like someone crumpled a regular rocks glass in their hand like a bad first draft.
At Table Top, an August show at the Driveway gallery in Brooklyn, legendary architect James Wines and his environmental art studio SITE debuted glass candlesticks that resemble melted wax. Michael Yarinsky, cofounder of AD PRO Directory design firm Office of Tangible Space, helped curate the show as part of his dinner party series and forthcoming book A New Futurist Cookbook, and describes this style of glassware as a return to craft. “This kind of sensual design, it’s not easily reproducible in a mass market way,” he says, which lines up with trends he’s seeing toward more handcrafted objects, even for everyday drinking and eating.
