The use of specific glasses for specific drinks is not a new idea – wine, beer and cocktails are all traditionally served in specialist glasses said to improve aroma and flavour. But soft drinks usually just get chucked into the nearest tumbler. That’s all set to change with Max Lamb’s Lemonade Glass for Makers & Brothers, designed by the British designer especially for the citrus-based soft drink from which it takes its name. But the idea started out as a bad pun.
“It started as a joke, as the suggestion of ‘Lamb-onade’,” Makers & Brothers creative director Jonathan Legge tells design geek. “There were many bad ideas floated about, but then a shape emerged based on Max literally cutting, slicing and stacking lemons to model a form.”
Known for his hands-on approach to design, Lamb stacked two lemons on top of each other to create the form of the glasses. He drew the lemons for local glass-blowers Waterford, who made a mould from Irish fruit wood, and hand-blew the glasses. “It made for very interesting conversations with our glass blowers,” laughs Legge. “They are very old-school, former Waterford Crystal craftsmen who had never been sent a drawing of stacked lemons before!
“But we loved the oddity of it all. We also loved that it was a glass for a very special drink and as such has its own story.” Each glass is blown in just one minute in batches of 50, and then left to cool for 24 hours before being cut and polished.
The resulting form fits comfortably into the hand, its ‘waist’ – where the two lemon shapes meet – providing a grip to prevent it slipping even when a cold drink and a hot day conspire to cover the glass in condensation.
Makers & Brothers was established by brothers Jonathan and Mark Legge to champion handmade “objects of integrity” and everyday design and craft. “We sell objects of use; the simple, the beautiful and the sometimes nicely odd,” they explain.
