Green and white spiral hand-blown pitcher

Green, striped, and slightly wavy — a lobed green glass pitcher, hand-rolled with a single strand of white glass. Bottle green. With fine stripes. Unapologetically curvy. A mystery of the Riviera. We found this lovely pitcher in Nice, a city that was Italian until 1860 and still isn’t quite sure which side of the border its heart belongs to. Our pitcher seems to share this confusion, and frankly, it suits it well. French or Italian We’ll let it keep its mystery. The Tuscan art of green. If it is Italian, it most likely comes from Tuscany, where the glassworks of Empoli spent centuries perfecting a very particular shade of green. Initially, it was a matter of practicality. The iron present in the local sand naturally tinted the glass, and the furnaces produced thousands of sturdy green bottles. The Tuscans simply called it verde, and for generations, it was the color of everyday life: wine on the table, oil in the pantry, water in the pitcher. In the 1930s, the workshops began to indulge themselves. Glassblowers who had spent years making bottles started to play with shapes and decoration, a flirtation that turned into a true love story after the war, when Empoli glass was shipped to homes from Paris to Palm Beach. One strand, infinite spirals. This brings us to its magic trick. A glassmaker wrapped a single strand of molten white glass around its green body, again and again, like a ribbon around a maypole. It’s an Italian idea at heart: Venetian glassmakers have been working with milky white lattimo glass since the Renaissance. Then, while everything was still incandescent, our artisan pinched it to form soft lobes, so that each white line dips and undulates with its silhouette. The result is both Breton sailor stripes, tulip-like, and a fantasy of lemonade on a Ligurian terrace. Turn it over. Turn it over and the whole story is there. The white strand spirals around the base and wraps around the pontil mark, the small scar that each hand-blown piece bears as proof of where the glassmaker's rod held it. Viewed from below, it’s a six-petaled flower. Viewed from the side, it has a true personality. The handle was applied by hand, and the spout was stretched into a small sharp beak. Hold it up to the light and you’ll see tiny bubbles trapped in the glass, little breaths from the furnace that no modern factory would accept. Made for long lunches. Place it on the summer table with mint water, sangria, or a well-chilled rosé, and watch everything appear ten degrees cooler. Che bello! Pieces like this were made one by one, by hand and by eye, so no line is exactly the same. That’s precisely the point. Details. Hand-blown in green glass with opaque white strand decoration, pinched and lobed body, applied handle, stretched spout, and pontil mark at the base. Found in Nice, European, possibly Italian, and dated from the early to mid-20th century, circa 1930–1950. Height 22 cm (8.7 in) and measures 16 cm (6.3 in) from handle to spout and 14 cm (5.5 in) wide. Better together. It’s a star on its own, but with a supporting cast, it truly shines. Pair it with our swirling green Ichendorf Milano glasses, mouth-blown in Italy with their own twist of verde, and serve it all on our large oval gallery tray by Broggi of Milan, with two centuries of Milanese silver beneath it. One spiral pours, the other spirals back, and the silver captures every reflection. There’s the aperitivo hour set, from Milan to your table!.