Thorough The Drinking Glass | Dead Programmer's Cafe

I’ve been thinking about soda (aka pop) a bit lately, so there’ll be a few soda related posts. Here’s the first one.

My childhood memories about soda come down to three things: Soviet drinking glasses, Soviet soda machines, soda siphons and the little booth in Odessa run by a cantankerous married pair.

The mass produced Soviet glass is a legendary piece of glassware. I took me a while to figure out how to translate the Russian word for this type of glassware - “Ð³Ñ€Ð°Ð½ÐµÐ½Ñ‹Ð¹”. “Edged” immediately came to mind, but the proper term is “paneled”.

The Soviet paneled glass was designed in 1943 by the sculptor Vera Mukhina (best known for her sculpture “The Worker and Collective-Farm Girl” and it’s shape was possibly suggested by Kasimir Malevich (famous for his painting “Black Square“).

The author of the article linked above suggests that the popularity of the glass came from the fact that worker’s hands became accustomed to things with edges such as hexagonal nuts. The cheapness and robustness of the glass indeed made it very popular. So popular that is became a symbol of alcoholism in Russia after being featured in countless anti-alcoholism posters and cartoons.

There’s a similar glass that is popular in American restaurants, but it is a little different: the panels do not reach the top of the glass and they come in a number of sizes:

I bought 8 very similar glasses today since I gave up on looking for the real deal on eBay. Also this seems to be a similar glass used in Rocco’s restaurant, the subject of the show on which I am currently hooked.

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