This Glassware Is Helping Save the Mexican Glass Blowing Industry

Apolis’s Mexican glassware collection. Photo: Courtesy

What’s better than getting your hands on something gorgeous, unique, and affordable for your home? Getting something gorgeous, unique, and affordable that also helps empowers an entire community of artisans on the brink of losing its livelihood.

Apolis, the Los Angeles-based lifestyle brand that advocates social change on a global scale, just debuted the Global Citizen Exchange—a new “transparent marketplace” that produces products with the intent of solving human and environmental problems.

For its first project, the GCE has turned its attention to the dying art form of Mexican glassblowing. According to Apolis, a whopping 75% of Mexico’s glass blowing studios have closed in the last decade due to global competition.

So in an effort to turn that statistic around, it’s collaborating with Studio Xaquixe (a glassblowing collective in Oaxaca, Mexico) on a collection of glassware—and you can help.

Initial sketches of Apolis’s Mexican glassware collection. Photo: Courtesy

The airy, four-piece collection, hand-created by 14 artisans, was blown exclusively from crystal clear, recycled glass and includes a drinking glass, vase, candle, and carafe. Perks, for those to donate to the campaign, begin at just $15 for a drinking glass—half the retail value.

The airy, four-piece collection, hand-created by 14 artisans, was blown exclusively from crystal clear, recycled glass and includes a drinking glass, vase, candle, and carafe. Donate to the campaign on IndieGoGo, and prices begin at just $15 for a drinking glass—half the retail value.

It’s a simple way to help small artisanal communities—simply by beautifying your home.

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