The Moon is Made of Green Cheese

It isn’t entirely clear who was the first person to coin the proverb “The Moon is Made of Green Cheese”, but most credit either the famed French monk and satirist Francois Rabelais (1483-1553) or English writer John Heywood (1497-1580). The phase was initially used to refer to something so outlandish that only the exceedingly naive would believe it. During the 16th century, “green cheese” meant “new, non-aged cheese”, rather than the actual color green. This vessel represents a modern, literal interpretation.

References to a Green Cheese Moon continue today in popular culture. On April 1, 2002 NASA “proved” the Moon was made of green cheese (with an expiration date!) using doctored pictures allegedly from the Hubble telescope. In the “Duck Tales” NES video game Uncle Scrooge obtains a chunk of the “Green Cheese of Longevity” from the Moon.

- All art work is handmade by Robert Wiener in the DC Art Glass Studio. Kilnforming is a method of shaping glass in a kiln using heat and gravity. Techniques used by the artist include fusing, slumping, casting, printmaking and coldworking. It is common of kilnformed glass to have slight color shifts and small "champagne" bubbles.