James Baxter recently moved to this idyllic spot in Sarasota, Florida with the desire to achieve a product design/manufacture 'atelier' type of studio that produces unusual products of extremely high quality and superior functionality. He utilizes outsourcing for some of the components of his designs and has been able to account for the quality level he demands for each of his pieces.

The Corx Winestopper was designed in direct response to the regular problem a lady friend had reopening a re-corked bottle of chardonnay. Her method of choice was the grab-the-cork-with-the-teeth-and-pull method which, while quite effective, did not seem to be the most appropriate way for such an attractive woman (or anyone for that matter...) to have to enjoy a second glass of wine. She did have a bottle stopper that someone had given her that was essentially a cork on the end of a section of a corinthian column. The stopper worked well enough until the cork eventually started to crumble, but the stopper was too tall to allow the recorked bottle to fit on the shelf in the fridge without having to lie down at a an angle which, of course, knocked over everything else on the shelf.

Jim had the notion that there must be a more elegant way to solve this problem and set to his metal lathe and wood lathe in an effort to find the solution. After realizing that no two wine bottle necks were alike in diameter or internal taper, he elisted the help of several local restaurants who were good enough to save their empty bottles for him to use in his testing. This nearly required a storage addition onto the studio. Magnums and champagne bottles proved to be in another realm altogether and were eliminated from the required functional criteria.

The final design, as it stands in the patent, is the essence of simplicity that solves all of the problems addressed with a beautiful and timeless aesthetic. The addition of a logo emblem into the wooden top allows the product to move into an unlimited number of marketing areas beyond the realms of wine and gourmet food.