The Cocktail Glass You’re Supposed to Flip Upside Down
The maker's page calls this glass dishwasher safe and the museum's calls it hand wash only. Both are authorised sellers. We could not settle it.
Did not pass
Flip the glass over. The hollow arch that forms the base? It becomes a second, smaller vessel for aperitifs.
MoMA liked that enough to make it an exclusive. We liked it enough to run 10 sources through our verification pipeline.
It scored 7.9. We needed 8.0.
The Path Nobody Plans
Altarik Banks was studying psychology at Montclair State University when he wandered into a 3D-printing class at the school’s MIX Lab in 2017. He started making vessels for a local coffee shop with a classmate. The classmate moved on. Banks kept printing.
Hunker, in a November 2022 interview, described what happened next: Homa Studios became “one of those rare college senior projects that morphed into a real-world artistic operation.”
Banks graduated in 2018 with a psychology degree, not a design degree.
His ceramics use clay he sources from Toney’s Brook in Montclair. His studio operates out of the Krueger-Scott Mansion in Newark through a Makerhoods residency. The name “Homa” comes from the Bulgarian word for “nomadic,” which Banks chose because it sounded like “home.”
The Arch Cocktail Glass is something different from the ceramics. Borosilicate glass, set of two, three color options (amber, blue, green). Each glass measures 5.5 inches tall, 3.8 inches across, holds 6.5 ounces.
The design trick is structural: the hollow base that gives the glass its distinctive arch silhouette doubles as a second drinking vessel when you invert it. MoMA’s product listing describes it as suitable for “Martinis, Negronis, Manhattans, Cosmopolitans,” with the inverted form sized for “aperitifs, digestifs or whiskey.”
The Museum Trail
Three museum stores carry Homa Studios products. MoMA Design Store lists the Arch Cocktail Glass as an exclusive. The Store at MAD (Museum of Arts and Design) stocks the brand. MCA Denver does too. The Newark Museum of Art hosted a Homa Studios trunk show in October 2023.
That is an uncommon level of institutional validation for an emerging studio. Museums curate. Their buying decisions are editorial statements. Three separate institutions, each with their own curatorial standards, independently decided this work belongs in their retail programs.
The editorial trail is real, too. Dwell featured the Arch glass in November 2025. Yowie published a Q&A with Banks in August 2025. Hunker ran a full interview in November 2022. Makerhoods profiled the studio in 2020.
Curated retailers including Souvenir Studios, Aperitivo in Boston, and Stranger and Co. stock the line. Wholesale distribution runs through Faire.
Where the Math Stopped
We found two customer reviews. Both on MoMA’s product page. Both five stars.
One reads: “These are beautiful glasses!” The other: “Love it so unique and beautiful and wine tastes better in it!!!”
The brand’s own site displays “No reviews.” The product does not appear on Amazon (Faire confirms this with a “Not on Amazon” badge). We found zero Reddit discussions, zero forum mentions, zero third-party review coverage.
Two reviews from two strangers on one platform. That is the entire consumer evidence base for a product stocked by three museums.
Our confidence score landed at 55 out of 100. Exceptional institutional validation pushed the external echo factor to its maximum. But platform integrity, review volume, and sentiment consistency scored low because the data barely exists.
Trust derived to 5.5 out of 10. The final SleekNova Score: GLOW 9, WOW 8, MOMENT 8, TRUST 5.5. Weighted total: 7.9. Threshold: 8.0.
One detail we could not resolve: Homa’s own site lists the glass as “Dishwasher Safe.” MoMA’s listing says “Hand wash only.” Both pages are live. Both are from authorized sellers. We documented the discrepancy but could not determine which is correct.
What Would Change This
More customer reviews across more platforms. The institutional validation is among the strongest we have encountered for an emerging studio. The editorial coverage is genuine, verified journalism from real publications.
The founder’s story checks out at every point. The design is functionally innovative in a category (cocktail glassware) that rarely innovates at all.
The gap is narrow and specific: consumer voices. If the people buying these glasses start writing about them, the math shifts.
Everything else is already in place.
If you want design-forward borosilicate glassware that already cleared our verification, the Sophie Lou Jacobsen Ripple Cup Set scored 9.0 on similar design-press credentials and Sight Unseen validation.
