By Minju Pak

In March, as New York City went into lockdown, the creative community working at UrbanGlass — a nonprofit organization that provides glassblowing studio space, exhibitions and classes for artists and designers in Downtown Brooklyn — faced an uncertain future. Glassblowing is impossible to do at home, and since glassblowers work in proximity to one another and often share tools, reopening the studio — even with social distancing protocols in place — is a tricky proposition. In a show of hope and resolve, three artists — Susan Spiranovich and Adam Holtzinger, the founders of the design company Keep, along with Anders Rydstedt — decided to team up on a project called Re:Gather, the results of which will be made and shipped as soon as the artists are able to return to a studio. Their first product, Cupples, is a series of simple and elegant glasses offered in five colors, including blush, aqua and amber, and features an interlocking design — a glass band wrapped around half the cups corresponds to an equivalent cutout in the other half — that illustrates the need for social connection. “We recognized a shared sense of loss for in-person collaboration that is essential to our work,” says Rydstedt. The name Re:Gather may seem self-explanatory, but it is also a reference to the glassblowing process itself, during which the material is gathered or collected on the end of a blowpipe. Finally, Cupples is meant to remind us of the comforts of sharing a meal with one another, with the hope that we will be able to do so in the near future. $200 for a set of two, keepbrooklyn.com.