Kist is a beautiful word. It is an old word, from a time before whisky. A time of mist, and voyages, and large things as yet unnamed. It came to Scandinavian Scotland by way of the Norse Vikings, who referred to the very northern point of Scotland as the Sutherland, the south lands of the Norse world. This is where our name Norlan comes from, the fields and waters where the Norse and the Scotts collided.

At that time Kist translated to a box or coffer, a keeper of precious things. Over the centuries, the meaning of kist has since evolved, like all things do from memory and spoken word, but its spirit lives on in our creation of a singular repository for the Norlan Glass.

The story of our Kist, your keeper of precious things, follows a similar narrative to the word itself—involving voyage over great distances of land and sea. Over two years ago, when the Kist was only a vision, our designer traveled from Iceland to meet the Scottish woodworkers Method Studio near Blackness Castle on the southern banks of the Firth of Forth. A collision of culture and skills, with a particular blend of heritage craft and digital nuance, ensued, and the limited edition Kist for eight Norlan Glasses was born. We offered this edition during our Kickstarter campaign and briefly thereafter.

Following this release, our Kist evolved still further (as objects in the service of women and men sometimes do) with new designs to accommodate two and four glasses. With these designs, we embarked on a yearlong journey to develop and fabricate with a new partner, the smaller, though no less considered, production editions we offer here.