BOTTLES COLLECTION by KLAAS KUIKEN

Mass produced green glass bottles will get new individual shapes when designer Klaas Kuiken works with them. He blows them one by one into unique objects.

He started his project with the question  “Are there any irregularities in mass production?” He discovered those irregularities in glass bottles: when cutting the bottle, the wall thickness was found to be different every time.
To emphasize those differences he developed his own technique of glassblowing, by using an oven, adapted by himself, and a compressor. By blowing up the bottle the glass bulges more at places where the thickness of the walls is thinner and less at places where it’s thicker.

Playing with heat and presure controls – and not without a fair share of explosions and cracked bottles – he created a collection of unique bottles that all have the same origin.

The Bottles collection was Kuikens graduationproject and was nominated for the DOEN Materiaalprijs 2010: a prize for the sustainable and innovative use of materials.