The Design Language Of Bottles: Form, Glass And Identity

Which Object Are We Looking At?

The soy sauce dispenser dated 1961 in MoMA’s collection was designed by Kenji Ekuan and GK Design Group. The museum record identifies its manufacturer and lists glass and polystyrene plastic as the materials.

A collection record brings designer, manufacturer and materials together around one object. The form can then be read alongside the different roles behind it: the design shaping its lines, the organisation producing it and the physical materials.

Which Decisions About Form Are Documented?

M+ describes the design through its wide base, tapered neck, transparent glass body and red cap. The museum record also identifies the angle of the spout as a distinctive design detail.

Those details offer a reading of silhouette through both material and geometry. Describing the glass surface, the colour of the cap and the body’s outline separately allows the object’s visual language to be followed through tangible parts.

How Do We Read The Date Of A Sauce Container?

A date on a museum label invites a first question: which object is being described? The introduction of a design, the period when an individual example was made and its museum acquisition record are different kinds of information. Reading a sauce container through those distinctions opens its identity over time alongside its glass and cap.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art record for a Cruet Stand dated 1770–1771 brings different vessels into one frame: two glass bottles for oil and vinegar, two pierced-lid casters for pepper and spices, and a closed-lid caster for mustard. Here design concerns the arrangement of separate contents within a set as well as the outline of a bottle.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds a silver stand by Lewis and Smith, dated about 1805–1811, with object number 1983.441. Its record includes an important qualification: the glass bottles now shown with the stand are not original. Parts appearing in the same image therefore cannot automatically be assigned the same date and origin.

The distinction also helps with a modern object. MoMA records the soy sauce dispenser designed by Kenji Ekuan and GK Design Group under the date 1961; its object number is 145.2005.1. The National Museum of Singapore dates its own bottle carrying that design to the 1980s, under accession 2018-00677. A design date and the period of an individual example answer different questions.

The manufacturer’s own account, dated 27 March 2020, describes the design objective as creating a vessel that would be regarded as tableware, alongside a plate or teacup. This is the manufacturer’s record of its intention. Beside the museum objects gathered here, it makes room to ask how a container is understood as an object at the table, alongside its relationship with its contents.

These examples need not form a continuous story of development. A stand gathers separate vessels around it; a single bottle brings body, cap and identifying marks into one object. Placing them together is the comparison proposed by this article. It establishes neither a historical line of influence nor an origin for Biberify’s bottle.

Returning to a bottle brings several details into focus: what shape does the body carry, how does the cap define its upper edge, and which name does the label give the object? Asking what a recorded date refers to adds another precise detail to that design portrait.

• Read label information and date terms

Glass And Cap: Traces Of Mass Production

Glass forming and bottle closure can be followed through different records. Michael J. Owens’s glass-shaping machine was patented as US 766,768 on 2 August 1904. John L. Mason’s US 22,186, dated 30 November 1858, describes improvements to screw threads on bottle and jar necks. William Painter’s US 468,226, dated 2 February 1892, records a bottle-sealing device. These documents describe concrete design solutions for different parts of a bottle.

MoMA’s 2004 exhibition Humble Masterpieces placed everyday objects within design history. Painter’s crown cap is recorded in the museum’s collection as 165.2005, and the 1961 soy sauce dispenser examined here as 145.2005.1.

• A History Of The Sauce Bottle: Glass Bodies And Closure Design

What Does The Label Add To The Whole?

The label’s upper edge can be read beside the shoulder line, the direction of lettering beside the body’s axis, and colour fields beside the cap. A front view emphasises graphic arrangement, a side view volume, and an overhead view the cap’s geometry.

Bringing these three views together for one object allows the bottle to be read at several scales of design. On a hot-sauce bottle, the words describing the pepper and the contour of the glass are different layers of one object. Attention moving from the placement of a letter to the body as a whole introduces the everyday table object through its details.

• How a Bottle’s Lip Opens a Question About Pouring

• The Acoustic Form of the Space Inside a Bottle