Of olive oil drips, a naive kid and an almost perfect object

The world of olive oil bottles is divided in two - the ones that drip and have their outside walls covered with a sticky and oily film, and the beautiful and almost perfect Marquina bottles.

Spanish architect Rafael Marquina knows only too well how badly designed the olive oil bottles can be. When he was a kid, his mother used to ask him to pass her the olive oil (¡pásame el aceite, niño!). Rafael would invariably pick the bottle by its handle, oblivious that it was resting on a dish that protected the table from oily stains. The dish would invariably stick to the bottle, and it would invariably fly until it ended up crashed on the floor much much to the despair of his infuriated mother. Just imagine: she would give me one slap for every dish, and every day she would ask me to pass the olive oil - said recently Rafael Marquina in an interview.

Probably still suffering from an aching cheek, in 1961 Rafael Marquina created a bottle that would forever end with the drip and tray problems. These glass bottles feature a flared neck that prevent prevent dr

ips from running down the outside. The neck acts as funnel that forces the drips inside the bottle, and the ground glass of the opening and stopper keeps them firmly together. The large bottom provides enough stability, avoiding the bottle to tip over. The stopper is easily extractible and has a small ope

ning that allows you to control the quantity of liquid you want to use.

The Marquina bottles suspiciously look like an Erlenmeyer, a glass flask that is widely used in every lab. They share the same large flat base, the conical body, and the cylindrical neck, and they both were designed to solve the similar challenges. But, the inspiration seems to have come from the work the of the Finish designer Tapio Wirkkala for Arabia.

Rafael Marquina claims that these bottles are far from perfect. The grind glass of the opening and stopper have to be hand made, making it unsuitable for industrial production. And this according to the arch

itect, is not in agreement with two of the most important premisses of design: low pr

ice and economy of procedures. Regardless, this

iconic object have become a symbol of Spanish design and possibly its most copied object

Image taken from the book 'Cocos, copias y coincidencias' (Editorial Electa)