Hand-Blown Green & White Swirl Pitcher

Green, Striped & Slightly Ruffled — Lobed Green Glass Pitcher, Hand-Wound with a Single White Glass Thread

Bottle green. Pinstriped. Shamelessly curvy!

A Riviera Mystery
We found this lovely pitcher in Nice, a city that was Italian until 1860 and still can’t quite decide which side of the border its heart belongs to. Our pitcher seems to share the confusion, and frankly, it suits her. French or Italian? We’ll let her keep her mystery.

The Tuscan Art of Green
If she is Italian, she most likely comes from Tuscany, where the glassworks of Empoli spent centuries perfecting one very particular shade of green. It started as pure practicality. Iron in the local sand tinted the glass naturally, and the furnaces turned out thousands of sturdy green bottles. The Tuscans called it simply verde, and for generations it was the colour of everyday life: wine on the table, oil in the pantry, water in the jug. By the 1930s, the workshops had started to show off. Glassblowers who had spent years making bottles began playing with form and decoration, a flirtation that would turn into a full-blown love affair after the war, when Empoli glass was shipped to homes from Paris to Palm Beach.

One Thread, Endless Swirls
Which brings us to her party trick. A glassmaker wound a single thread of molten white glass around her green body, round and round like ribbon on a maypole. It’s an old Italian idea at heart: Venetian glassmakers had been working with milky white lattimo glass since the Renaissance. Then, while everything was still glowing hot, our maker pinched her into soft lobes, so every white line dips and sways with her silhouette. The result is part Breton stripe, part tulip, part lemonade-on-a-Ligurian-terrace fantasy.

Flip Her Over
Turn her over and the whole story is right there. The white thread spirals across the base and coils around the pontil mark, the little scar every hand-blown piece carries as proof of where the glassblower’s rod once held it. Seen from below, she’s a six-petalled flower. Seen from the side, she’s pure personality. The handle was applied by hand, and the spout was pulled into a neat little beak. Hold her up to the light and you’ll spot tiny bubbles caught in the glass, little breaths from the furnace that no modern factory would allow. 

Made for Long Lunches
Put her on the summer table with mint water, sangria or a chilled rosé, and watch everything look ten degrees cooler. Che bello! Pieces like this were made one at a time, by hand and by eye, so no two lines are quite the same. That’s exactly the point.

The Details
She’s hand-blown in green glass with applied opaque white thread decoration, a pinched and lobed body, an applied handle, a pulled spout and a pontil mark to the base. Found in Nice, she’s European, possibly Italian, and dates from the early to mid-20th century, circa 1930–1950. She stands 22 cm (8.7 in) tall and measures 16 cm (6.3 in) from handle to spout and 14 cm (5.5 in) wide. 

Better Together
She’s a star on her own, but give her a supporting cast and she really shines! Pair her with our Ichendorf Milano green swirl tumblers, mouth-blown in Italy with their own twist of verde, and serve the lot on our Broggi of Milan grand oval gallery tray, with two centuries of Milanese silver beneath her. One swirl pours, the other swirls back, and the silver catches every reflection. That’s aperitivo hour sorted, all the way from Milan to your table!