Glass Works

Shaped by a 35-year friendship and a shared obsession with beautiful things, Casa LV’s hand-blown glassware sits somewhere between sculpture and utility. We speak to the Cape Town brand about the craft, colour and friendship at the heart of it all.

WORDS Gina Dionisio PHOTOS Supplied

Casa LV, a Cape Town-based homeware brand known for its beautiful, bespoke, hand-blown glassware, was born from a friendship between two women with very different, yet deeply complementary, relationships to glass.

“Lynne and Vilma have been dear friends for 35 years. From the beginning, creativity was always part of their friendship. They have both always been passionate about fashion, interiors, collecting beautiful things and working on creative projects together,” says Julia Hirsch, Marketing Manager at Casa LV.

Glass was something they both had a deep connection to. Lynne grew up around the industry as her father was involved in a glass factory, while Vilma, with her Italian roots, had always collected hand-blown glass and had an instinctive appreciation for it.

What essentially began as a passion project has naturally evolved into a growing family business, with Vilma’s daughter Lara joining as Projects and Wholesale Manager and Lynne’s daughter Julia coming on board as Marketing Manager. For Julia, this is what makes Casa LV special – “the foundations have never really changed. It is still built around genuine friendship, passion and a shared love of the product.“

Interestingly, Casa LV was not always destined to be a glassware brand. Lynne and Vilma initially experimented with ceramics and porcelain, but neither material was able to achieve the transparency, depth or colour they were imagining. Eventually, they returned to glass, and that became a major turning point for the brand.

Material Matters

For Casa LV, the raw material – glass – always comes first. “We think about what glass can do naturally rather than trying to force it into something it does not want to be. From an initial idea, we brief our artisans and begin prototyping. That process can take time, and the first attempt is very rarely the final one. There is a lot of refining of proportion, weight, colour and functionality before we feel a piece is right,” explains Julia.

Every vessel in the Casa LV range is mouth-blown and shaped by hand, meaning no two pieces are ever the same. “Finding the right glassblower was another process of trial and error. Once we found the artisan we work with today, there was a huge amount of persistence on both sides and it took close to two years of development to really achieve what Lynne and Vilma had envisioned,” says Julia. “The candle cloche was one of the greatest technical challenges. Unlike a traditional hurricane, ours is open at both the top and the bottom, which sounds simple but was incredibly difficult to execute correctly by hand. It became a tireless exercise in refining the form until it worked.”

One of the foundations of a Casa LV piece is its weight. The team work with three layers of glass, which gives the objects a wonderful solidity and presence. Julia explains that a practical consideration is always there – “a vase needs to comfortably hold flowers, an ice bucket needs to function as an ice bucket, and a cloche needs to work around a candle. For us, the best object sits somewhere between sculpture and utility. A Casa LV vase should be beautiful filled with flowers, but when the flowers perish, the glass should remain as an object in its own right.”

Colour Play

A sense of play is essential to Casa LV, whose colour palette is intentional but not calculated. “We usually begin by looking at international colour trends and what is emerging across fashion, interiors and design more broadly. From there, we interpret those influences through the Casa LV lens rather than following them too literally,” says Julia. “After almost a decade of working with glass, we have learnt which colours our customers return to again and again, so there are certain shades that have become Casa LV staples.”

From Cape Town to London and Beyond

While everyone within the team brings a different heritage and influence to the business, Casa LV is proudly crafted in Cape Town. “Casa LV simply would not be Casa LV if the product were manufactured somewhere else. Championing South African craftsmanship also means showing that locally made design can sit confidently on an international stage,” says Julia.

The brand has recently gone international, expanding to the UK through Julia’s London-based business Hue Haus. “One of the most rewarding things for me has been watching someone in London encounter Casa LV glass for the first time and respond to it in exactly the same emotional way that people do in South Africa,” she says. “Seeing Casa LV begin to find a home outside South Africa feels like the next chapter of the same story rather than the beginning of a different one. The roots remain firmly in Cape Town; the audience is simply becoming larger.” @casa.lv | @hue.haus.london

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