Client
Kayra Wines
Category
Glassware
Year
2015
Scope
Industrial design, form development, CMF
Channel
Foodservice
Constraint
A white glass, a red glass and a chilling bucket, drawn from Kayra's identity, with a form that had to earn its distinctiveness functionally rather than decoratively.
The hard part was never the drawing. The form was complex enough to require a three-part glassblowing mold, and finding a manufacturer willing to take that on was the real obstacle.
Decision
The undulations are what make the glass, and they will not release from a two-part mold. Simplifying the geometry was the obvious way to get it made, and it was the version manufacturers were willing to quote. That version was a reasonable glass and it was not this one. The three-part mold stayed in, which meant going back out and asking again after each no until someone agreed to run it.
The seams came with it. Three mold parts leave three parting lines instead of two, and on clear glass a parting line is visible. They were placed to run along the undulations rather than across them, so the line moves with the form and gets read as part of it.
Cost and yield both went the wrong way, higher per piece and more rejects than typical glassware. That was acceptable here because the run was a limited number of pieces made specially for restaurants serving Kayra, which is a different economic problem than a retail glass.
The bucket was the last of it, less a fight than a translation: the same undulating language at a larger scale and in thicker walls. The geometry that made the piece hard to manufacture is the same geometry it is remembered for.
Finish
Blown glass, three-part mold, parting lines run along the undulations.
More work
