This glassware design started as a tea glass called Dem, and it carried a shape a press mold is not supposed to be able to make. That contradiction, a soft, wavy, almost floral form coming out of a straight-draw press, is the whole story of the product, and a good example of how I approach glassware design, inside real production limits from the first sketch.
Where the shape of this glassware design came from
The form goes back to traditional copper ayran jugs, the fluted, softly waisted vessels used for that drink for generations. I wanted to carry that warm, familiar silhouette into pressed glass, a modern material and an industrial process, without losing the softness that makes the original feel handmade. There is a quiet full circle in it, the shape borrowed from an ayran jug, and years later the glass is used for ayran among many other drinks.
The problem hiding in the shape
Pressed glass has a hard rule. The mold pulls straight up to release the glass, so anything that curves back on itself, any real undercut, gets trapped and cannot come out. A wavy, S-curved body with a flower-like top is exactly the kind of shape that rule forbids. Blown by hand, it is easy. Pressed by machine, it looks impossible. I wanted that shape anyway, so the work became finding a way to keep the softness and still obey the mold.
Letting the glass do the work
The first move was to use how glass naturally behaves instead of fighting it. Glass runs thin at the top and thickens toward the base as it forms. I built the curve into that behaviour, so the wave follows the material’s own logic instead of being forced onto it.
The second move was hidden geometry. The body carries a very slight draft angle, enough for the mold to release, invisible enough that the eye reads it as a pure curve. And the vertical flutes, the petals you see from above, are not only decoration. They are placed exactly along the mold’s opening line, so the parting of the mold disappears into the pattern. The technical constraint became the ornament.
I solved this part together with the mold maker. I knew the shape could be made and I knew the logic to get there, and he made it real. It is honest teamwork, a designer who thinks in production and a craftsman who makes it possible.
From one glass to many drinks
Gourmet began small, as the Dem tea glass. Then the size grew, a handle was added, and it became a mug. Once it left the tea table it kept finding new uses, ayran, cocktails, hot and cold drinks, wherever a comfortable handled glass made sense. One form, many rituals. A single well-resolved shape earned its place across very different tables, which is its own kind of sustainability, a product people keep using.
Where it stands
Gourmet was born in 2013 and is still in production and on sale today, sold in many parts of the world. It is one of the few products I designed for full automated production, most of my work then was for handcraft, and it turned out to be one that lasts. I still come across it in restaurants and online, long after it left my desk. For me that is the real measure of good glassware design, not the launch, but the long life.
Read the full design story on Behance.
Discover other product and glassware projects by Sinem Hallı.
Designer: Sinem Hallı, Award-winning Industrial Designer
Client: Paşabahçe