In Set of three perfume bottles, Nick Wirdnam demonstrates virtuoso glasswork techniques on an intimate scale. To produce these miniature bottles, Wirdnam cases the central sphere of hot-worked coloured glass — here green, purple and orange — in a heavy and clear glass layer, which is then faceted by a thin black layer on the outside.

Although the work’s title might suggest that these are simple objects of utility, the encased colour in the centre appears amorphous and bulbous, like a rising air bubble or perhaps a gaseous planet. This lends to the perfume bottles an aesthetic imaginary that is ethereal, interstellar — even ‘out of this world’.