Glass is gold

Meet our man Amos Enders-Moje. He is an obsessive collector of used bottles, old school TVs and, strangely, concrete cores. He looks like a mix between Brad Pitt and John Corbett (from his carpenter/’Sex in the City’ days but without the belly).

What’s the link between a nice looking bottle collector and a hotel? In-room and restaurant items.

Amos turns precious used materials into new things. He has made us an assortment of things like water glasses, scotch glasses, beer glasses, hanging pendant lights, milk jugs, vases and sculptures (these items are all made out of old bottles), coasters (made out of concrete cores) and sushi platters (made out of old TVs).

Amos’ idea of a good night out is treasure hunting, with Lux the dog, behind his local goldmine (read bottle shop) and snuffling around the tip for discarded everyday materials to turn into useful objects, to give them new life. As he says there is a plethora “of objects of remarkable use being thrown away” (yeah, he is smart too). His new pieces; they only become new Amos explains when they are changed, as opposed to an unaltered material put to a different use; are designed to evoke their original source. This at once highlights the beauty in the changes he makes while still reminding us of the useful things we keep throwing away.

Not just content with using the pieces he needs for a specific work, Amos saves everything from screws to plastic covers either to make into something later on or to save to be recycled.

One example of the life of a beer bottle in Amos’ eyes: the bottle’s body will be made into a drinking glass or milk jug; the neck will be crushed up and mixed with concrete (terrazzo style) to be made into sculptures or tabletops; the ring will be made into an actual ring (a jewellery one), and the metal cap saved as packaging for the rings he makes. His method includes cutting, hot popping (sounds like a mad 80’s dance move) and etching.

Amos’ foray into the world of redesign for reuse began after he finished uni (where he trained at ANU as a traditional glass cutter like his vater and his großvater before him) and he put on his first couple of exhibitions. The GFC had just hit and people weren’t buying. This was coupled with his first electricity bill, which blew his mind after having always had access to the uni machines and free electricity, got him thinking about the resources he was using and then snowballed hitting him over the head and leaving Amos a resource miser.

Amos now works from a workshop in Melbourne that he hopes will soon run off solar energy and harvested water for his machines under the name of Mo-en Design. You can pick Amos’ glasses and carafes – they are the ones that are individually signed underneath.