A Look at Wine Glasses – As Art and Luxury Items

A while back I wrote about the Georges Duboeuf’s Nouveau Expression-Be Heard Art Contest. Becky Suriano of Phillipsburg, New Jersey, has been announced as the winner. Suriano is an artist who creates intricately hand painted wine glasses. The contest was judged by Brooklyn graffiti and music artist “Kaves” who reviewed more than 70 submissions from around the U.S., including paintings, drawings, photographs and video.

This year’s Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais Nouveau will feature a one-of-a-kind graffiti-inspired label designed by Kaves.

Suriano, whose art-glass business is called Wine Me?, will receive $1,000 and the chance to spend a day with Kaves in New York. She calls her designs “drinkable art.” and this got me wondering as to what other wine glasses were out there that were considered works of art.

There are many beautiful Art Deco, Nouveau and antique Venetian and Bohemian glasses – Otto Prutscher’s designs are quite extraordinary. The wine glass opposite was made circa 1906. Prutscher (1880 – 1949) was an Austrian architect and designer. He designed interiors as well as buildings and created designs for furniture, jewellery, porcelain, textiles and book covers.

A modern designer has caught my eye who is also an architect. I prefer my wine glasses plain and simple but Steven Ma’s X-aperitivo range is very striking. More art than wine glass, I think, but amazing nonetheless. Steven Ma is currently teaching architecture at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and you can see his designs at his Blog Xuberance.

Last month the world’s “Most Expensive Wine Glass” was revealed. It’s not what I would call a work of art but it has a diamond in the stem. It costs $3,750 and the glasses are hand blown in Austria. They are made from borosilicate, a glass type known for its high resistance to thermal shock, which maintains the wine’s properties at normal levels while the glass is held in warm hands.

The world’s “Most Expensive Champagne Glass” are actually a pair and were made by John Calleija, of Calleja Jewellers. They are adorned with 1,700 diamonds, both white and a rare Argyle pink as well as platinum and white and rose gold. These glasses are hand carved from a pair of 8kg blocks of quartz crystal and weigh over half a pound apiece and share between them 15 carats of diamonds. Only one pair were made and an anonymous Melbourne client paid $400,000 for them.

I’d be interested to know what wine glasses you like – whether art or luxury rate highly in your opinion or whether it’s the wine they contain that matters most.

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