Box Vox

packaging as content

«
»

July 6, 2012

Package Design & The Leaning Tower of Pisa

Liqueur Pisa: another tilted bottle that would have fit nicely into the previous post, but I didn’t yet know about it.

The tilted bottles from yesterday had various themes to explain their non-vertical stance —(water buoy, speedometer/stick shift, melting, intoxication)— but it just stands to reason that there would be tilted bottles based on “the leaning tower of Pisa.”

The Liqueur Pisa bottle comes in a box that also leans. But compared to the filigreed figural bottles used to package a variety of Italian tourist products, this is a fairly restrained abstract metaphor. (It’s like the tower only in that it leans.)

Figural bottles and jars with architectural details are more typical.


This photo from Kevanne’s Flickr Photostream is identified as “oil” but I think they actually contain alcoholic beverages

One thing I did not find is a leaning-tower-of-Pisa-shaped “can” although there were a number of leaning-tower-of-Pisa-shaped stacks of cans. Usually peas.


Bill Greenblatt UPI

Second-year architecture student Mike Baldwin adjusts cans on top of his creation, “The Leaning Tower of Peas,” that he and several other classmates made out of canned goods, at Ranken Technical College, in St. Louis, Missouri, December 8, 2000. The 2200 cans collected by the Architecture Department will be donated to a food pantry. Several other departments at the school also made different creations using electricity and water.

Can Collection, UPI, 2000

The Pisa/Peas idea has apparently occurred to a number of people. Baldwin’s tower, above, is the earliest example that I found, but Canstruction, founded three years later, has featured quite a few “leaning towers of peas” over the years. I like knowing that he used that drawing in the lower right of this photo as an architectural reference.

(More leaning towers of peas and leaning tower packs, after the fold…)


From Canstruction: three leaning-towers-of-peas and one leaning-tower-of-tomatoes

Like the Liqueur Pisa packaging, Mikey Hester’s design for a backwards-leaning mini toast container is a more abstract representation of Pisa’a leaning tower.

This leaning tower of Pisa thimble came in a leaning tower of Pisa shaped box

More jewelry than packaging, this 1950 Italian lipstick case (from David Weingarten’s collection of souvenir buildings) was designed by jewelry designer Louis Nichilo.

“For women: If what you’ve always wanted is a lipstick case that looks like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, you can have it now. Gold plated, three inches high, with colored stones for decoration, it is made to fit all standard lipstick refills, costs 6.000 lire ($9.60) at Louis Nichilo, Via Sistina 42 In Rome.”

Travel Magazine, 1962

_______________________________________________________________

“If you want good value in fine jewelry, go to Nichilo at 42 Via Sistina. A manufacturing jeweler for the best New York stores for 25 years, Louis Nichilo has retired to Rome where he has his own private workrooms. He will make anything to order.”

Italy 1963, Eugene Fodor

Comments are closed.