Molly Young: Consider the... Glass Grapes (Wine Zine 02)
Consider the… Glass Grapes
Originally Published November 2018
We all have our trophies. A hunter has his deer mount, a cook has her knives, a writer has her shelf of books. Trophy objects are for personal pleasure and social broadcasting: they remind us who we are and indicate to others how we'd like to be seen. They're also the reason I've never been able to make minimalism work for me—it turns out I need a shitload of visual evidence to support the foggy sketch of what constitutes my identity. This same principle explains why it can be offensive to receive a terrible gift from a friend—a corny book, a ghastly shirt, a lame object. A gift is an interpretation of your nature, and if someone gives you a bad one, it's hard not to feel obscurely (if irrationally) wronged.
What happens, then, when you discover something you love without understanding why you love it? An object that says nothing discernible about your personal history, bears no relation to your intended future, matches nothing in your closet, flatters no element of your character? This is the embarrassing self-help book that plucks your heartstrings but doesn't belong on your public-facing bookshelf, or the tacky souvenir prism that dazzles you with its rainbow beams, or the slug of Kahlua in your hot chocolate—whatever private pleasures you indulge that don't precisely contribute to your aspirational sense of self.
“The decorative table grape is a paradigm of something objectively beautiful—lambent, colorful, nature-inspired—but functionally useless and bankrupt of meaning. They’re an aged fad, as obsolescent as a paperweight or a rotary phone but without even the defense of bygone purpose.”
As an example, consider the decorative glass table grape. Perhaps you have spotted one at an aunt's house or languishing in a garage sale; my own encounters have been entirely mediated through eBay. The decorative table grape is a paradigm of something objectively beautiful—lambent, colorful, nature-inspired—but functionally useless and bankrupt of meaning. They're an aged fad, as obsolescent as a paperweight or a rotary phone but without even the defense of bygone purpose. When did table grapes become a thing? When did they cease to be one? I found myself scrolling through online auctions comparing grapes, wondering if incorporating one into my house would silently (but aggressively) disrupt the self-affirming order of my environment.
As a motif, grape clusters are eternal. You can find 1920s Murano grape chandeliers for $3,700 and $800 grape-shaped accent lamps from the 1930s. The Metropolitan Museum of Art owns a grape-shaped Roman jug (circa 4th century A.D.) in pearl-gray blown glass. Presumably the Roman jug was made in tribute to wine; maybe the others were, too. But glass table grapes—no function, just decor, spiking in popularity during the Nixon administration— appear to have arrived in 1963, in Utah of all places.
One study of the midcentury phenomenon describes a Mormon woman named Ruby Swallow finding herself in a crafty mood and collecting a pile of old Christmas ornaments. She filled the holiday globes with plastic resin and strung them with wire into a grapelike cluster. Swallow's friends admired her ingenuity and urged her to display the creation in a homemaking exhibit, which ignited local interest. A crafts shop hired Swallow to give lessons in DIY graping. The hobby went viral, and table grapes became a 1960s Utah meme before spreading nationwide. The gift aligned nicely with Mormon ideals: the grapes had a storebought-looking sparkle but could be produced, in a spirit of modesty, by hand.
“They became collectible. Why? I dunno, possibly because there’s nothing to do with table grapes but display them on a surface and wait for someone to notice.”
Or, as it turned out, by machine. Manufacturers began producing every iteration of cluster. There were grapes with ceramic leaves and driftwood stems, lucite grapes in unnatural colors (teal, bubblegum, flamin' tangerine), 24-karat-flecked grapes on stems of silk cord. They became collectible. Why? I dunno, possibly because there's nothing to do with table grapes but display them on a surface and wait for someone to notice.
For me, having never encountered a glass grape in the wild, browsing them on the internet yields an ulterior thrill. As much as we rely on external accessories to transmit our inner selves, it's equally refreshing to cast everything off and try on a novel persona. What kind of person owns a polished set of decorative grapes? Could it be you?