Beer bottles reblown into drinking glasses in the Boing Boing Bazaar

New in the Boing Boing Bazaar:

Glassblower Nick Paul of Chicago drinks beer. (Hopefully, he has some friends who help him out with it, from time to time.) Then he takes the empty bottles and blows out their necks to make flat-sided tumblers. Then, in a stroke of packaging/marketing/recycling genius, he puts them back in their original six-packaging and sells them through his online storefront, Windy City Glass.

Beer bottles reblown into drinking glasses (Via Make: Online)

Previously:

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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farmfoodie

@#22 No, I think $10 per glass is crazy too. I wouldn’t pay that much for a drinking vessel. But hey, this craftsman is upcycling a resource with a large amount of embodied energy. If he can get that much for his work, then more power to him.

I do wonder how many of those glasses he can crank out per hour. I’d hope that it would be five or six at least. Even using free raw materials, his time must be worth a good deal given how long it would take to master glassblowing. Not to mention, running a glass forge/furnace is rather energy-intensive.
hijukal

A neat idea and they look great, but they don’t look like they would be very good for beer. Which is a shame.
Anonymous

For those in the UK (or London, at least), similar glasses are (or, certainly, used to be) available from several stalls in Spitalfields market. I seem to remember them as being cut down and ground smooth rather than re-blown, although possibly using larger 660ml bottles.
st vincent

Not to be a poopmeister, as glasses look nifty, but have they been annealed?:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annealing_(glass)

If they’ve not, they might be a bit on the hazardous side… a stress fracture waiting to happen. I don’t see anything on the link that says anything about it one way or the other.

If they have been annealed, then never mind… neat idea… rock on!
- Andor
  
  Apparently yes, as the description on the product says: “After shaping, the new item is placed back into the oven to cool slowly.”
  
  I think that maybe that fits into ‘annealing’…
- Anonymous
  
  This is common practice for many beginning glass blowers. In my undergrad days studying glass at alfred university, my fellow classmates and I would make these. Yes they are annealed. After opening up the lip of the bottle, the glass is knocked off the punty into gloves & placed into a kiln to be annealed.
  
  red stripe bottles work great too :)
szcole

I like this idea. Bottle Hood in San Diego (http://www.bottlehood.com/) does a similar thing, but cuts them down rather than reblow the glass. I have a couple of their Arrogant Bastard tumblers.
elliot winner

I have a friend who does this for $5 per 64oz ( I think they’re 64oz…like a Rogue bottle? ) bottle I bring her. I have quite the microbrew glass collection!
glory bee

I think that frankly these green glasses are a work of art. I love them but am in Australia so how can I buy them?
Anonymous

can they do a goblet from a wine bottle ?
Anonymous

have 4. like them.
Anonymous

these are nothing new, im pretty sure every beginning glass blower at one point or another was struck with the idea… I know that I did it for a while while in college for extra beer money… also, just so everyone is aware, the glasses are pretty thin and very not-durable, the crack easily, and given the nature of the industrial glass, even when annealed i have seen them do some funny stuff.

PS: 10 dollars for a cup is pretty cheap actually–not in the realm of walmart and target or ikea, but in the realm of actual, hand made, objects.
Baldhead

I wish Arrogant Bastard wasn’t the only good beer in there. Also wish it didn’t cost so much. No need to spend that much to add to the prodigious beer glass collection.
kc0bbq

What a nifty idea. These are just fantastic.
MB

Looks like a textbook case of trademark infringement, to me.
- dculberson
  
  I do not believe that reselling an existing product could possibly infringe trademark. He did not print the 6-pack holder, but is only using it to hold the glasses.
gabrielm

How is the paint on the bottles not compromised in the process???? http://bit.ly/bzw8Nt
MrJM

His Rolling Rock glasses are much nicer:http://bit.ly/b8xxI3
jbm

Get me a 6 pack of Yunegling ones and then we’ll talk
ian71

This may be the oddest “fair use” I’ve seen yet, but I think I like it. Still, once Heineken finds out about this they’re going to poop on him.
unmoris

I can’t be the only one who thinks $10 a glass is crazy expensive!
Anonymous

Here’s some bottles that are blown using a blowpipe into other items:
http://www.wolfartglass.com
jeligula

Ooooh! You just made a sale. I must have some of these. They are exquisite.
BWChicago

Let’s see him do coke bottles.
- hijukal
  
  A while back, in Venice, I saw Coke bottles which had been blown into “shoes”. Purely for decoration, of course. Damned if I can find a link to any photos.
Anonymous

I don’t even drink beer and I still think these are cool!
mellowknees

omgomgomgomg! That is so awesome!!! I REALLY miss the glasses that POM tea used to come in. They have this same sort of tall/skinny shape with a bottley-bottom. How cool to find a new resource for tall, skinny, creative glasses! w00t, I say! w000000t!
- Kingboy
  
  That was pretty much my thought as well…I only have two POM glasses left, and they really are my favourite drinking vessels.
  
  May have to see about getting some of these instead now that POM has gone the el-cheapo plastic route…
valtz

what unmoris said. they’re cute, and a steal at half the price.