07/11/2025
These aren’t your everyday Coca-Cola bottles. They’re something much more refreshing.
British street artist Mau Mau, whose latest solo showcase ‘ ..’ premieres at Vertical Gallery () on Friday, July 11, spent Tuesday afternoon painstakingly transforming Coke’s famous contour bottles into objet d’art versions of Molotov cocktails — hand-thrown incendiary weapons consisting of frangible containers filled with flammable substances and equipped with fuses (in this case, rolled-up dollar bills). Pay special attention to the labels, which depict Mau Mau’s name in Coca-Cola’s distinctive Spencerian typeface.
The iconic Coca-Cola logo, introduced in 1887, was designed by Frank Mason Robinson, the Atlanta-based soft drink manufacturer’s bookkeeper. The brand’s pervasiveness is undeniable: as of 2025, Coca-Cola is sold across more than 200 countries and territories, with roughly 2.2 billion servings of the company’s beverages consumed each day. “Coca-Cola is a fluid that, like gasoline, is indispensable to, and symbolic of, the American way of life,” E.J. Kahn Jr. wrote for The New Yorker back in 1959.
Mau Mau’s Coke bottles go on sale tonight when ‘ ..’ opens to the public from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. Mau Mau () will be on hand signing copies of his new book ‘Talking Out of My Art,’ so don’t miss out!
