Studio Grind to Lion Vision
Buck Glass and Sweater Kingpin spent nearly three years building a one-off, fully functional lion hookah in Buck Glass’s Oregon studio, treating it like a true long-form project where every color pull and cold-work decision had to match the final silhouette.
Sculpture With Lungs
The piece is fully functional at roughly 24 × 18 × 11 inches. Hand-mixed North Star Light Yellow forms the body, and more than thirty Sweater Kingpin facets appear across the build, used like set stones rather than simple accents.
Face, Crown, and Mane
Nine aligned facets form the lion’s face. The crown and mane carry twelve fumed jewels in silver and gold ruby, and the chest holds five diamond-cut jewels with a larger focal stone at the center.
Engineering Under the Mane
The chest contains a removable functional section built around a suspended gold ruby diamond percolator, housed in a beaker-style hookah assembly tuned for smooth, balanced diffusion.
Flexible Glass, Two Hoses
Buck Glass’s articulated glass hoses end in hollow, faceted Sweater Kingpin mouthpieces, keeping the entire experience glass from tip to base while solving the usual handling problem that comes with large hookah formats.
Heaterz Debut
King of Kings debuted at Everdream Studio’s Up Heaterz show at Space Gallery in Denver on December 11, 2021, and was immediately treated by artists and collectors as museum-grade functional work.
The Number Everyone Heard
Community posts from that weekend reported a private sale near $250,000 (allegedly). There is no public auction record attached to it, which is typical for private, top-tier heady transactions.
Why It Hit
The impact came from coherence. Buck Glass’s large-scale engineering and Sweater Kingpin’s precision faceting read as one design language, with the hoses, crown, chest jewels, and internal floating perc all supporting the same visual thesis.
Afterglow
Photos, videos, and later reels kept the lion in circulation as a benchmark for how far functional borosilicate can be pushed, both technically and culturally, without losing the “it still works” integrity that makes the category matter.
YOUTUBE VIDEO
- Nugg Notes
SOURCES:
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Buck Glass (official site), “KING OF KINGS - LION”
Supports: collab (Buck & Adam G), ~24” x 18” x 11”, North Star light yellow, 30+ facets, 9-facet face, crown w/ 12 fumed jewels, chest jewel layout, removable functional section + suspended perc, flexible articulated hoses, “worked on over three years,” debuted at Heaterz 2021.
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Everdream Studio Instagram post announcing “Return of the Heaterz”
Supports: event date and venue, 12/11/2021 at Space Gallery in Denver, CO.
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Reddit (r/nextfuckinglevel) community post about the piece
Supports: community-reported sale figure claim that it “sold for $250,000” in Denver that weekend (not an official auction record).
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