A Bottle Break

With a busy June and July coming up, I’m taking a break between fine art pieces but still like to work in my studio when I can. I thought about doing some decorative work, and then I remembered a bottle that I had bought from an estate sale over 20 years ago. I thought I might have even gotten rid of it, but I found it at the back of one of my closets.

It is an unusual shape and only slightly wonky—most bottles are imperfect—and has a bit of a lean on one side. Still, it is a tall and distinctive bottle and I thought I could do something with it. It’s bulging shape did not lend itself to my usual geometric technique, and I’ve been wanting to do something 3d with marble for some time.

I came up with this design after contemplating the shape of the bottle and asking myself how I could best exploit the shape without making the project extremely difficult.

You can see the bottle at right (click on it to zoom). It measures 18.5” | 47cm tall and is about 6” | 15cm at its widest. I’ve marked the bottle vertically in eighths, and in this pic I’m just ready to start mosaicking the lines with brown marble.

The dark brown marble is Emperador, and I don’t know what the beige is. I purchased the marble from Home Depot a few years ago as a mix for wall applications. I absolutely love Emperador marble! It has beautiful variations and veining, but can be tricky to cut. I’m accompanying the earthy marbles with acid green gold in crazy paving.

We’ll see how it turns out.