One Design, Four Forms

At first glance, repeating the same design across several pieces of glass might seem relatively straightforward.

Prepare the artwork once, change its size to suit each piece, and repeat.

But when the objects themselves are different, scaling alone rarely produces the same result.

Four dark amber glass bottles with etched olive branch designs and one with engraved text.

A recent commission involving four dark glass bottles provided a particularly clear example. Each bottle was to carry the same underlying design: an olive branch on the front, with an inscription and single olive on the reverse.

Three carried the inscription in English and one in Romanian.

Together they needed to read as a set. Individually, the artwork needed to belong to four quite different forms.

A screenshot of the Adobe Illustrator 2026 interface showing a design workspace with layers, properties and a grid of black botanical vase illustrations.

The same design is not necessarily the same artwork

The olive branch provided the visual thread running through the set.

Its character needed to remain consistent, but the bottles varied considerably. One was tall and narrow with a handle; another had broad shoulders and a shorter body; the two smaller bottles presented yet another set of proportions.

Simply reducing the largest branch to fit the smaller bottles would also reduce every leaf, olive, line and space within it.

The result might technically fit the available area, but the character of the illustration would begin to change.

Instead, the branch itself could be reconsidered.

Leaves could be removed or repositioned. Olives could move. The length and direction of the stem could change. Areas of detail could be simplified while spaces between elements were retained.

The aim was not to preserve every mark.

Two dark amber engraved glass bottles featuring illustrations of an olive branch and leaf design, with personalised text in Romanian.

Designing for proportion

The overall dimensions of a piece of glass do not necessarily describe the area in which an engraving will sit comfortably.

Shoulders curve. Bodies taper. Handles interrupt a silhouette. Bases and necks create natural visual boundaries.

The tall handled bottle illustrates this particularly well.

Its height allowed the olive branch to remain long and open, but the handle gave the bottle a pronounced direction. The artwork therefore needed to relate to the form rather than simply occupy the mathematical centre of its dimensions.

The shorter bottles required a different balance. Their branches became more compact, but without allowing the individual elements to become correspondingly small and crowded.

This is where scaling becomes composition.

An engraving graphic showing two white bottle outlines. The left bottle has a white olive branch illustration, and the right bottle has a small olive with a small text block.

Front, reverse and the object between them

The design was not confined to one side.

Each bottle carried the principal olive branch on the front. On the reverse, an inscription was accompanied by a single olive taken from the same illustration.

That created another relationship to consider.

The front and reverse are separate engraving areas, but they belong to one three-dimensional object. As a bottle is picked up or turned, one composition gives way to the other.

Typography introduces its own proportions too. Three bottles carried the wording in English, while the fourth carried the corresponding Romanian inscription. The wording therefore had to be treated as part of each composition rather than simply placed within a predetermined space.

The isolated olive helped connect the reverse to the principal artwork without requiring the branch itself to be repeated.

Consistency without duplication

There is a difference between making several objects identical and making them belong together.

Here, the consistency came from a set of shared decisions: the character of the olive illustration, the relationship between branch and inscription, the treatment of the typography and the division between front and reverse.

Within that structure, each bottle could be considered individually.

The longest branch did not have to dictate the proportions of the shortest. The position of an olive could change. A leaf could disappear. The spacing of an inscription could respond to the available surface.

None of those changes weakened the relationship between the four pieces.

They were what allowed that relationship to survive the change in form.

Prepared for the glass

Much of the design work behind an engraved piece is invisible once it is finished.

By that point, the discarded leaves, alternative arrangements, changes of scale and adjustments to position have disappeared. What remains is the version that belongs on the glass.

This is why preparing artwork for several pieces is not necessarily a matter of creating one design and reproducing it at different sizes.

The object participates in the design.

Its proportions establish possibilities and constraints. Its curves influence position. Its usable engraving area affects detail. Even the way it is likely to be viewed or handled can alter the relationship between different elements.

These four bottles began with one visual idea and retained the same underlying structure throughout.

What changed was the way that idea occupied each individual form.

One design. Four forms. Four individually considered compositions.

Return to the Library

Working with more than one piece? A shared design can be developed across different glass forms while allowing each piece to retain its own proportions and character.

Explore Bespoke Commissions

Related Work & Reading

1 3