Glass Reinvented: Yiannis Ghikas on Soda Tables for Miniforms

About Soda Tables

Soda tables are Yiannis Ghikas’s the latest collaboration with the Italian brand Miniforms, named after one of the three main ingredients of glass, the material out of which the tables are made.

Throughout Soda’s research and design process, they were astounded at the lack of glass-blown products of this size and kind. It was only later that they realized it is because of the technical difficulties inherent in the handling of such an object, as well as the degree of expertise required to do so. An expertise possessed by a handful of highly skilled artisans in the Italian island of Murano.

Among their main objectives was to use one of the most characteristic attributes of glass in their advantage: its transparency. Thus, they designed an object with such a geometry that allows it to play with light and shadow, creating different shapes as one’s perspective changes.

“Soda was born upside-down, with a puff of air. It weighs 20 kilos, and it is blown, drawn out and shaped by three master glassmakers. The result is a single volume of glass with three large petals forming the stem. In Soda, the glass vibrates: its tough, hammered surface fragments its transparency to give a primitive aesthetic. This is artistic value granted to an industrial product.”