I was happily wandering around Zara Home when I chanced upon this Gold Parrot Stemmed Wine Glass.
Much as I love Zara Home I have a few issues with the description of this glass. The “parrot” looks more like some kind of pheasant and though it is a stemmed glass its really not the best kind of stem for any kind of wine. This wouldn’t matter as much at a sit down meal but probably would for cocktail hour, when people spend more time holding their glasses.
So even though Zara Home’s description makes it sound like pirate swag, I’ll probably think of it as a chinoiserie stemmed water glass. The gold foil looks like gold, bronze, brass or aged silver according to the angle the light hits it. The picture is of a pheasant against a background of peonies and paulownia - a common subject in traditional Japanese and Chinese art.
Now, this glass is very much my taste because its clear glass, stemmed, has a motif in gold rather than a pattern or full colour picture and because of the motif itself. Even so, I did wonder if the motif, in particular, would restrict how I could use it.
After some though I decided that in any case it would always work with a plain white setting and that if one thinks of it in looser terms as just a glass with 'gold' and 'a bird' and 'flowers' on it, it could still be used in a variety of settings. I tried out a couple of ideas below.
