Kinetic glasses bring wine to life
A burning love for hot glass motivated artist Emma Klau to design a one-of-a-kind kinetic wine glass, sure to swirl conversation at any dinner table or cellar door. But the real beauty is in its function.
Heat radiates from the 1200-degree “glory hole” of a reheating chamber on JamFactory’s hot shop floor.
It’s the kind of intensity that would make many recoil. But for South Australian glass artist Emma Klau, this is her element.
Dressed in trackpants, a tee and nothing but goggles as armour, Emma manoeuvres a long metal rod to melt, colour and shape molten glass with mesmerising ease. She blows, swings and cuts glass as if it’s soft plastic, until a delicate decanter takes form.
For onlookers, it’s physics-defying stuff — as much a lesson in science as it is a spectacle of art. Members of the public are free to watch glassblowers like Emma from JamFactory’s viewing platform daily.
Emma, 40, comes to the Morphett Street studio workshop weekly to craft her product line of glassware as well as freeform pieces — giant trunk vases, oversized platters and commissions.
But it all started with “the” glass.
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It was 2011, and Emma was in her two-year JamFactory associateship when she embarked on designing a wineglass to refine her glass blowing skills.
There were variations. A glass with straight sides; taller sides; a more bulbous base; a glass that was smaller, “and I just landed on this”, Emma says.
“I had designed a big bulbous glass and I just thought, ‘No, Riedel has done something like this’,” she says. “So, I stuck a point on it, and it’s been my most successful design.”
Emma’s kinetic wine glass was born — a hand-sculpted design that, with a slight nudge, rotates on a 45-degree axis around its bottom “point”.
This movement, Emma says, helps the wine to “breathe”.
“They work really well, and that’s the point,” she says. “I’ve been told by winemakers that they make their bad wines taste good. They breathe them really well.”
Functional as they are, Emma admits first watching her product sell from JamFactory’s shop floor in 2012 felt surreal. “They’re $88 a glass,” she explains. “But it’s a hand-blown, bespoke, designer wine glass.”
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With intensive JamFactory training under her belt, Emma launched Glass by Emma Klau in 2013, growing her kinetic glassware line with different sizes and colours, as well as decanters and pinch bowls. A gold-tinged whiskey glass is a particular favourite, sculpted to be “gutsy on the base, so you don’t get the heat transfer”.
And while some might find the idea of a rotating wine glass a little nerve-wracking, Emma assures: “glass is meant to be fun”. It is, after all, why she chose to specialise in the craft during university.
“You get to try ceramics, sculpture, photography … but when I got to glassblowing, I just fell in love with it,” she says.
It’s not for everyone — Emma says the original class of 30 students whittled down to six enthusiasts who could withstand the formidable heat.
“You acclimatise,” Emma says. “You just have more fans than Beyonce, it’s great.”
It’s also physical. A gymnast in her youth, Emma says she’s “a lot stronger than I look”.
“I like to swing it out,” she says of the molten glass, drawing attention to an oversized trunk vase – the weight of a small child.
“I can make a perfect round plate, but when I actually pull it (the molten glass) up, it gives them an organic feel. I like to let them have their own life. I think it’s nice to have something a little bit different – you can buy a round plate anywhere.”
Today, Emma, who is a mother of two, works with two other glassblowers to produce her line. “It’s a dance,” she reinforces. “Heat and gravity.”
Her full range is now on display at OmMade the Maker in Adelaide Arcade, while a selection of items also can be found at various high end gift stores, wineries such as Tapanappa in the Adelaide Hills, and markets including Bowerbird.
She dreams of opening a “hot shop wine bar” in the city or Hills, where people can taste wines from different producers and experiment with glass blowing (not at the same time, of course).
“I’d like to offer that experience – come in and make a paperweight – let people have a go,” she says, wanting to share her passion for an art she’s honed over her professional life to date. It’s something she doesn’t take for granted.
“It’s my therapy,” she says. “I’m very lucky. I love my job.”
This article first appeared in the October 2025 issue of SALIFE magazine.
