Antique and Vintage Wine Glasses

Before the recent trend of stemless wine glasses imposed a one-size-fits-all, casual-Friday attitude on the sublime act of sharing a good glass of wine with family and friends, adults were entrusted to drink their Bordeaux, Burgundy, or Champagne from a stemmed goblet expressly designed to bring out the flavor and character of the fermented fruit. Today, new stemmed wine glasses are still produced by the likes of glassware giants such as Libbey and Reidel, but if you really want to make a moment truly special, consider making a small investment in a set of delicately etched or deeply cut antique or vintage wine glasses. Some of the earliest wine glasses that are still perfectly usable were manufactured during the so-called American Brilliant period, which ran from the end of the 19th century until the first few decades of the 20th. From a design standpoint, American Brilliant cut glass aped the leaded-crystal goblets made by European factories, which perfected the technique of deeply cutting pieces by hand using metal, stone, and then wooden wheels. Of course, this hand work made American Brilliant expensive, but for members of the Gilded Age, the price was worth it in order to make a statement of one’s status and wealth. Naturally, the masses wanted in on this expression of the good life. To satisfy this need, manufacturers stepped up in the second decade of the 20th century to produce floral, fruit, and geometric patterns that were pressed into molds before being cut, making them more affordable. World War I further eroded the popularity of American Brilliant produced by companies such as Dorflinger. In the 1920s, Prohibition and competition from European manufacturers such as Baccarat of France and Waterford of Ireland made many forget about American Brilliant altogether, before the Great Depression in the 1930s brought the category to a crashing end. Still, there was still money to be made manufacturing wine stemmed wine glasses. Companies that routinely kept wine glasses in production included the venerable Indiana Glass Company and Anchor-Hocking, both of which made what came to be called Depression glass. Mass production made Anchor-Hocking’s glassware particularly cheap. Other famous wine-glass manufacturers were Imperial, whose sturdy Cape Cod glassware line was a favorite for decades, and Fostoria, whose delicate Chintz pattern was released just before World War II.