The Philosophy of Table Objects: The Freezable Swizzle Stick

When Objects Complete Themselves

Some objects arrive as if they were always meant to exist.

The Eye Candy pitcher brought its generous silhouette to the table, and the glasses gathered beside it like small companions. Yet the scene felt unfinished. There was a pause between pouring and tasting that asked for its own gesture, a moment waiting to be completed.

What was missing was not another vessel, but a line. A presence that could slip into the glass and awaken what rested inside.

And so, a slender column of glass appeared. Mouth-blown, weightless, almost shy in its simplicity. Inside it, a sealed ribbon of liquid waiting to become cold. Once frozen, it transforms: a beam of "pure cold," a tool that enters a drink not as intruder but as guest. It cools without clouding, stirs without disturbing.

The Discipline of Untouched Flavour

Here is a problem as old as summer itself: How do you cool a drink without changing it?

Ice is pragmatic but impatient. It melts, it intrudes, it shifts flavour with water. The frozen swizzle stick holds a different philosophy it participates without dominating. It cools without diluting. It influences temperature but respects composition.

This desire to chill without compromise has appeared wherever people cared about taste.

The Himuro Koya ice house in Yuwaku Onsen, Kanazawa where winter snow has been preserved in earthen chambers since the early Edo period. (Courtesy of the City of Kanazawa via Kaname Inn)

In Japan, the practice of preserving "pure cold" dates back over a thousand years. Himuro literally "ice houses" were chambers dug deep into mountainsides or earth, their walls lined with stone, topped with thatched roofs. Winter snow was packed into these cold stores in January and preserved until summer, when it would be ceremonially opened.

During the Edo period (1603-1868), the Kaga Clan presented this precious ice called Hakusan Ice after the nearby sacred mountain to the Tokugawa Shogunate. Eight porters would carry it 480 kilometers to Edo (present-day Tokyo) over four days and nights, rushed on foot so it wouldn't melt. Ice was so valuable that only those in power could use it; ordinary townspeople ate himuro manjū (sweet buns shaped like ice) and prayed for good health instead.

The Himuro-biraki ceremony on June 30, when preserved snow is ceremonially removed from the ice house. (Courtesy of the City of Kanazawa via Kaname Inn)

The philosophy was precise: preserve cold without introducing water. Keep temperature separate from composition. Up to two-thirds of the ice would melt before summer's end, leaving only a precious third which is why the practice mattered so deeply.

The tradition fell away with modern refrigeration, but was revived in 1986. Today, the Himuro Koya in Yuwaku Onsen still holds two festivals annually: snow is packed into the earthen cellar on the last Sunday of January, and opened on June 30th, the first day of summer in the old calendar.

Glass has always been part of this story. Dense enough to hold temperature. Transparent enough to feel invisible. Smooth enough to slip through liquid like a thought.

The freezable swizzle stick stands quietly in this lineage as it simply allows the drink to remain itself only colder, brighter, more alive.

When Objects Cross Worlds

Every handmade object carries the possibility of becoming more than its function.

Soon after its creation, the swizzle stick began living a double life.

Frozen and drawn along the cheekbones, it offered a morning gesture of waking the skin with cold, like rinsing the face in a stone basin at dawn.

Painting 1903, by Katharine Augusta Carl of Empress Dowager Cixi

It joined an ancient constellation of beauty tools. In 17th-century China during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912), jade rollers called yushi gunlun in Chinese were treasured by empresses and nobility. Empress Dowager Cixi was said to have used one regularly, believing jade's cooling properties could draw out negative energy and promote vitality. These implements, often adorned with gold accents, were considered precious family heirlooms passed down through generations.

The body, instinctively, understands the language of cold. Across cultures and centuries, people have pressed cool stone and glass to their skin in silk pouches, alabaster rods in desert rooms, glass implements kept in terracotta jars through summer heat.

Without changing its form, the swizzle stick simply expanded its meaning from table companion to small oracle of the body. From stirrer to morning wand.

Good objects do this. They behave with enough harmony of proportion and material that they become effortlessly adaptable, like a phrase that makes sense in more than one language.

The Object's Philosophy

The freezable swizzle stick is it's own manifesto:

That temperature is a form of design.
That purity is a kind of respect.
And that refinement can arrive in small gestures.

The Eye Candy collection pitcher, glasses, and swizzle sticks is mouth-blown and hand-shaped by our artisans. Each piece is made with intention, designed to bring a sense of play. Aquire The Swizzle Stick