The “Glass Molding” course focused on the development of a standard bottle range for O-I, (the world's leading glass manufacturer) suitable for all different types of spirits. The course concentrated on the topic of craft distilling and how a bottle could express the craftsmanship of a product. Throughout the semester we explored shape, color, decoration, size, and labeling.
With the definition of craft came the understanding of the stories behind products and how they are projected to the consumer from the shelf. I wanted to create a bottle with a story that resonated with the pillars of craft, tradition, individuality and experimentation. A personal story from heart and hand. I elected to create traditionally produced hand blown spirit bottles in collaboration with glass blowing masters. The next step would be utilizing
state of the art technology to 3-D scan the bottles and adapt them to industry standard while maintaining their artisanal characteristics.
Year 03 | Folkwang UDK
Process: 14 weeks.
Craft Bottle Design
Designed for O-I's Covet line
*Awarded an interim job with O-I's European Design Services Team for this proposal.
About the Hand Blown Experiment
Hand Blown™ is a journey, both into the past and into the future. Each Hand blown bottle family, begins with one glass blower and their own personal story. We asked each Artist to design and develop 3 hand blown bottles, (small medium and large) and create them using only traditional free blowing techniques. It is inspiring to see the artist’s own careful breath control the shape and size of each piece and to watch as each bottle gets a life of its own.
Next, the bottles get taken carefully back to our own labs where they are skillfully scanned using state of the art 3d scanning technologies. Using Computer automated design our technicians go over every detail adapting each bottle ever so slightly so that they can meet the highest quality production standard while never losing the magic and life blown into them. From each one of these adapted bottles a production mold is created.
We believe that every part of a product, contributes to the story it tells. Only a perfectly hand crafted bottle can hold your perfectly hand crafted spirits.
Process Explanation
Step 1. The bottle is blown using traditional mouth blowing techniques.
Step 2. The bottle is sprayed in a layer of chalk spray. the chalk spray is thin and copies the surface of the bottle, imperfections and all.
Step 3. Texturing the model. The spots
create anchor points that allow the scan-
ner to understand its position in space.
Step 4. I used a GO!SCAN3D scanner that projects a coded pattern of light from a white light (LED) source. This coded pattern will match the shape of the object to be scanned. The software, which can decipher the specific code, creates a 3D object geometry from the camera frames.
Step 5. The mesh is created in software called Creaform.
Step 6. Isolated parts of the mesh are deleted, and the surface is refined.
Any holes in the surface are patched.
Step 7. The bottle is shelled, and the neck hole is cut to match standard cork dimen-
sions. The bottle is scaled to size, and the inner volume capacity is fit to match standards. A CNC mold can be made.
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