A soft, milky blue with a faint opalescent shift where the light crosses it, on a glass blown by mouth in Tuscany.

The stem and foot are left clear, and only the bowl carries color, which is the detail that makes this glass work. A goblet colored all the way through sits on a table like a solid block. This one appears to float, with the blue held up on a clear knopped stem, and it is why it never overwhelms a place setting, no matter what else you have going on around it.

Because each piece is shaped by hand, no two are quite identical. That is the whole appeal of mouth-blown glass and the reason a set of them looks gathered rather than bought.

How to tell hand-blown glass when you see it. Look at the base for a pontil mark, the small dimple where the glassblower snapped the piece off the rod. Look for faint bubbles, slight variation in thickness, and a rim that is not machine-perfect. Those are not flaws. They are the evidence that a person made it, and they are the reason no two glasses in your cupboard will ever be quite the same.

It is called Rialto after the market district in Venice, though it is made several hundred miles south in Tuscany. It serves water or wine equally well, which is the whole argument for a glass shaped like this one. I use mine for sparkling water at brunch with a single viola floating on the surface, and for wine at supper, and I have never once felt I was reaching for the wrong glass.

Blue has always been my color muse. This is the shade I keep coming back to, against blue and white china, against white linen, against a table with almost nothing else on it.

Sold individually, so you can build a set slowly or gather several colors and let them pleasantly disagree with each other.