Even the poster offcuts get a part

Look at that curved display table in Hsinchu's Spring Pool Glass Studio. The drinking glasses progress from red through yellow and green to blue. Two transparent lucky cats steal the scene, red ears up, utterly serious about minding the shop. Does the boss pay overtime? Small glass spoons lie behind them. One exhibition photograph, one moment of weakness, and you're calculating how much cupboard space you can clear for new arrivals.

This season's Glass Dream Address brings Taiwanese and Japanese glass into the third-floor The POOL café, including RGC Ryukyu Glass Village, Hirota Glass's retro Taisho Roman series and tableware by Minami Ikeya. The whole building offers a dangerously convenient arrangement: a glass workshop downstairs, a shop on the second floor, then a café where the stuff gets to hold a drink. Looking, buying, eating: all under one roof in Hsinchu Park.

The exhibition belongs to W Glass Project's Galas festival and runs through November 15, 2026. Transparent City, which began September 12, connects participating shops in Taiwan and Okinawa. Its poster made me smile. Cut out the rounded shape and even the surrounding offcut gets to stay. Stick that frame on a window and the trees, sunlight and existing shop lettering join the picture. The sky has taken the lighting-and-colour job.

That outline also becomes handmade glass vessels, posted to participating shops for active duty: flowers, pens, displays. One pictured vessel has orange-pink flecks; another carries gold streaks and a single flower. When the festival ends, these objects needn't go into storage with the signs. They have plenty of life left, and actual jobs to get on with.