Bottle Stories

Arnout Visser is a designer who works with glass. Educated in Milan in industrial design but conceptually aligned with contemporary Dutch glass design, Visser applies a functionality to glass that allows him to innovate ways to work with it.

Visser worked with glassblowers in Kenya who are faced with many limitations to their craft. They use what is locally available: window panes, lenses, and industrial glass bottles; however, this glass is stiff and ill-suited to mouth-blowing. Visser and his Kenyan colleagues developed a method wherein the recycled glass is placed in an oven that keeps it at a temperature appropriate for glassblowing. This method is easy to reproduce, allowing glassblowers without arts funding to set up their own studios or plants. Visser’s project Bottle Stories – a range of unique glass objects from piggy banks to candlesticks – displays the broad range of creative uses for recycled glass while encouraging innovation by local artisans.