Wine glasses for hipsters

It took people a long time to figure out how to make glass. Specifically, how to make glass so perfect it’s almost invisible: completely flat, completely clear, completely flawless. There were a lot of mistakes along the way.

But what is a “mistake”, if not a lesson in alternative techniques? Colonial-era glassblowers weren’t going for the little bubbles, wavy surface, and irregular thickness of early glass. But if anyone ever decided they preferred that look, well, now we knew how to achieve it.

Of course, some people did decide they preferred that look. Like tech-savvy musicians adding digital tape hiss to their pristine laptop recordings, or the pre-distressed jeans your uncle has been joking about since 1987, the imperfection and irregularity of that old glass gave it a more human, handmade character, even if it it was actually made in a factory by robots. It might be what the Japanese mean by wabi-sabi, the beauty of imperfection. Or maybe we’re remembering that episode of King of the Hill all wrong.

Anyway, yesterday’s mistakes are today’s style options. Today we call this seeded glass. Where air used to get trapped in molten glass because of poor techniques and equipment, today our vastly improved techniques and equipment are used to put the air in there.

On purpose. Because some people like it better that way. And if that seems weird to you, well, think about the first time your uncle made fun of your ripped jeans.