Neighbors Matthew Ladin and Aron Siegal: Photos by James Coreas
It all started with a bottle of wine.
Neighbor Matthew Ladin couldn’t help but notice all the beautiful blue wine bottles his family threw away, which got him thinking: “Couldn’t these bottles be used for something better?”
A few years later he learned about a man in Nacogdoches who repurposes wine bottles into drinking glasses. Ladin contacted the artisan to ask if he was interested in teaching him his craft.
Ladin roped his friend, Aron Siegal, into the venture, and the two traveled to Nacogdoches to learn how to safely turn wine, soda, beer and liquor bottles into drinking glasses and vases.
They broke a lot of bottles at first, but they started selling the ones that made it through the process — which involves scoring with a diamond blade, heating over a flame, cooling with ice, breaking and a little bit of luck — at markets and shows around Dallas.
Their wares were well received, which convinced the pair to continue. They founded Rec’d Glass & Metal out of their homes in East Dallas and began crafting other objects such as table lamps, planters and wind chimes. They recently began turning old pickup truck tailgates into porch benches.
“The idea is to take something that would otherwise probably end up in a landfill and make it into something artistic and functional,” Ladin says.
These days they break less and less glass, but as Ladin points out, “It’s definitely an art, not a science,” even with their tools and years of experience.
That inspired the name, Rec’d Glass, which Ladin says has three explanations:
“It’s recycled glass. It’s wrecked glass because at the beginning we were destroying a lot of it because we weren’t that good at it. And if you drink a lot, you get a little wrecked,” he says with a laugh.
Learn more at facebook.com/RecdGlass.
