Planet Berlin: Jesper Jensen — Recycled glassware and Danish design

At his vine-covered Wedding workshop, Jesper Jensen transforms the discarded bottles he finds on the streets of Berlin into Scandinavian-inspired glassware pieces. The former design student rarely stops on his quest to repurpose empty wine bottles — and nor does his formidable in-house furnace.

He earns his money collecting bottles on the street, and his most important tool is a huge oven which almost never stops working. After all, Jesper Jensen has a passion for glass blowing. Anyone entering his workshop at the artist studios in Wedding can tell immediately that he is a student of design. His workroom is both comfortable and stylish; a couch and table with red, bistro-style benches provide the perfect colour complement to the two varieties of ivy spreading out over the net affixed to the ceiling.

The green vines wind out into the room, giving the space a comfortable, natural feel. “I am used to being around plants,” says Jesper Jensen, who hails originally from Fåborg, a small island in Central Denmark. On the kitchen table rests a loaf of fresh bread baked that morning by his partner, in the same oven normally used to produce pitchers, vases, and, above all, glasses. Jesper Jensen’s work is stored on the shelves — of which there are quite a few. His workshop is large, and the different tools he uses to produce the glass take up a fair bit of space.

The path travelled by an empty wine bottle — which, for most of us might end up as a candle holder if it’s lucky — on its way to becoming a beautiful, traditional Scandinavian glass is a long and arduous one. Jesper Jensen serves as a constant companion throughout the journey — from collecting the bottles to packaging the fragile final products in recycled boxes.

Most of the glasses are then sold online. Sometimes they feature in shops in Berlin, such as the famous Kauf Dich Glücklich. Many restaurants, such as the Danish-Japanese Sticks’n’Sushi on Potsdamer Strasse in Berlin’s Tiergarten district, also purchase their glassware here. Anyone wondering who and what is behind the final product is invited to visit Jesper Jensen in his workshop to see first-hand how the glass is cut, heated, and fired.