Welcome to Style Detective, a series from T Magazine. Each month, we’ll investigate readers’ questions regarding the items and objects they can’t stop thinking about — and can’t track down. Subscribe here and click this link to submit your own questions.
“We received four of these wineglasses 50 years ago as a wedding present. Unfortunately, one broke last night, and we would love to replace it.” — Judith, Winnipeg, Canada
I figured I’d be able to identify them right away, because I suspected they were made by one of my favorite designers, Joe Colombo, an Italian visionary known for his modular and multifunctional furniture and interiors. His was a career marked by prescience and innovation. Before the invention of the cellphone, Colombo, who died in 1971, predicted that we’d all be walking around with “telephones in our pockets.” In the early 1960s, he created a series of glasses that allowed people to hold a drink and a cigarette in one hand with ease. (He called the collection Smoke.) While that’s not a challenge most of us encounter today (apparently, he was less prescient about the effects of smoking), I can imagine a midcentury Italian bon vivant thinking it was important to drink, smoke and gesticulate all at once. And I love the dynamic shape of the glass, how it cantilevers over the base.
I’d assumed yours were early versions of Smoke designs, but it’s more likely they’re from Colombo’s 1964 Asimmetrico collection, whose glasses were manufactured by Tiroler Glashütte and Claus Josef Riedel and had thicker stems and smaller feet. I learned this after reaching out to New York’s Museum of Modern Art, which has an Asimmetrico glass in its permanent collection. Tanja Hwang, a curator in the Department of Architecture and Design, shared an image that showed a second major difference between the styles: the Asimmetrico stem is longer than Smoke’s.
Asimmetrico glasses are also rarer, probably because they were discontinued after a few years. Although they appear on auction sites now and again, they’re often misattributed to Smoke’s manufacturer, Arnolfo di Cambio. This could work to your advantage, since Asimmetrico glasses should, at least in theory, be more expensive than the Smoke ones, which retail for about $290 for a pair.
Hwang referred me to the British Museum, which has an Asimmetrico glass inscribed “JR,” likely a nod to Claus Josef Riedel. If yours have the same inscription, they’re almost surely an authentic set of Asimmetrico glasses. But according to Colombo’s former assistant Ignazia Favata, with whom I also spoke, yours may be a preproduction example, with a less visible screen printed inscription on the foot. It’s fun that after all these years, Colombo’s glasses are still teaching us a bit of history — and reminding you and your husband of yours.
