Dutch designer Rogier Martens is pleased to present a new series of hand-blown glass fruit bowls that take their final form based on (what else?) bowls of fruit. He notes that Leerdam, "the Glass City of the Netherlands," is also a major producer of fruit:The idea of the 'Fruit Bowls' arose during one of the many trips made ​​through the blooming orchards between Utrecht and Leerdam. Mold-blowing has two major disadvantages. each product is identical what takes away the exclusivity and it is a costly affair. I developed many interesting shapes by experimenting with glass and using fruit as a stamp or mold. After several experiments with different types of fruit, it proved to work best with the 'normal' Jonagold apple. This apple grown less than 100 meters from the glass furnace.

Where Athansios Babalis & Christina Skouloudi's fruit bowls took the shape of abstracted fruit, Martens' version is at once more and less idealized: the concept of a bowl that is 'fitted' to its precious cargo speaks to the notion of design for a specific purpose, yet reality dictates that each and every instance of a fruit will vary from the archetype.

Thus, the fruit bowls capture a unique amalgam of the general and the specific, both the idea of a fruit and the infinite variation of its real-world manifestation—in other words, how natural objects are perfect for their imperfections.

The production video, set to the dulcet tones of Radiohead, is also pretty badass:

Photo credit for the still life-like shots (an allusion to Dutch masters, perhaps?) goes to Lisa Klappe, who shot Dutch Design Week for us a few months ago. As for seeing the bowls in person:The 'Fruit Bowls' are part of 'The glass experiments at the Old Horn'. The bowls will be presented together with work from Bernard Heesen and Josja Caecilia Schepman during OBJECT Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The first international exhibition will be during the big summer exhibition 'Dutch Design - House of Orange at Oranienbaum Palace' in Germany.