What I Want For My Birthday, Item #1

American glass artist Andy Paiko makes beautiful things. Absolutely gorgeous things which marry the modern and the historical. Each piece evokes the atmosphere of the Victorian Cabinet of Curiosities… beautiful things which have an air of functionality, but are ultimately ephemeral, often like ghosts of themselves… such as the glass spinning wheel , seismograph or his bell jar series. What I want, however, is highly functional, and sculpturally magnificant - one of his absinthe fountains. Complete with skull-and-crossbones motif on the bowl, gold spigots and finely worked glass finial and foot, they are sinister and arrestingly attractive at the same time… like all the best things in life.

Look here for more of Andy’s work.