Birds and Petals by Mina Miladinović

Mina Miladinović is an architect and theater set designer. She is the creator of the brand Koko Daš, through which she explores paper as a material from the perspective of scenography, working with it in various forms: spatial installations, paper murals, paper illustrations, and paper miniatures.

Mina’s artistic work draws deep inspiration from birds, which she sees as powerful symbols of uncompromising freedom and positive omens. For the Creative Glass Serbia initiative, she transformed her creative vision into a unique glass form by reinterpreting the traditional Paraćin cut glass. This technique was applied to crystal glass models produced by the Serbian Glass Factory during the final period of its handcrafted production, blending heritage with innovation. Her approach goes beyond visual art, connecting her research on local glassmaking with the sensory experience of wine tasting, as she explores how different wines interact with glasses shaped by tradition. Through her work, Mina creates a harmonious fusion of cultural craftsmanship and personal expression, celebrating the legacy of Serbian glass art while inviting audiences to appreciate it in a new, tactile way.

Mina used the moment when the glass is spun to let the wine breathe, revealing its color and viscosity, to turn her flower petals into a bird as a way to showcase the Paraćn engraver-artists’ secret mastery through a sensory experience of their legacy.

The Paraćin glass from which Mina begins her reflection is a flower in the hand of the one who savors the wine, and during the tasting it transforms into a bird into which he immerses himself as he watches the color and inhales the aroma of the wine, before his first sip.

The “Birds and Petals”collection premiered as part of the exhibition “Paraćin Crystal Nostalgia” held in Paris, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Serbian Cultural and Information Center in France.