The weight of glass

Why the flacon is seven millimetres thick at the shoulder, and what that does to the liquid inside it.

Small glass bottles catching warm window light on a table

A perfume bottle is usually designed to disappear: thin walls, a wide mouth, a cap that comes off in one turn. Ours was designed to be held. The shoulder is seven millimetres thick, the base nearly nine, and the whole thing weighs 420 grams empty.

Thickness changes what you see. Light enters the glass, bends, and leaves the liquid looking deeper than it is. The amber of Orée reads almost red through the shoulder and almost gold through the face.

It also changes what you do. A heavy bottle is picked up with two fingers and put down carefully. Nobody sprays a heavy bottle in a hurry.

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Citrus, before the sun