Wine bottles carriers

This is an item I wonder whether Marcel Duchamps toyed with. The wine bottles carrier (porte-bouteilles) couldn't be more of a French invention.Purpose? Carrying-up full bottles of wine from the cellar and the reverse trip down with the duly empty ones. The frequency of these trips is an accurate gauge of your thirst.

Not that we care or that it matters.

The porte-bouteilles, and this is where it gets interesting, come with 4,6,8 and possibly 10 slots and usually in metal with a wooden covered handle for comfort and grip. Swinging one of those loaded with ten full bottles up a narrow humid stoned stairs is a skill almost worth putting on a resume. We, in France, would have the advantage: it often falls onto a youngster to take on that job on the request of the parents, too enthralled in an intellectual conversation and therefore badly in need of wetting their throats.

Metropolitain has an astonishing collection. It simply looks cool and whimsical on a kitchen counter loaded with wine or olive oil and vinegar. Then again, if you want to take over where Duchamps left it, elevate the porte-bouteilles to an art piece.