Set of three perfume bottles 1988

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’.