Not All Vintage Glassware Collectibles Are The Same And How To Tell The Difference

By Angela Miller


Vintage glass is such a popular item to collect that no antique store would be complete without a number of collections made in different countries, in different styles, and at different times. Collecting glass is so popular in part because the items people purchase are usually small enough to display easily. Most of them are fairly expensive as well. If you like antiquing, searching shops for vintage glassware collectibles can be a fun and interesting way to pass the time.

Some collectors are interested in several different types and styles of glass while others concentrate in specific genres. Whatever your preference, before you begin buying pieces, you should know something about them. Cut glass, for example, has been around for more than twenty centuries and is as old as the art of glass blowing itself. Today serious designers replicate the ancient process of grinding patterns and designs out on a specialized wheel.

Owning and entertaining with large, impressive pieces of pressed leaded glass symbolized your wealth and influence at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. This period was known as the American Brilliant. It came to an end when manufacturers began to produce cheaper versions of the prized pressed glass.

About the same time, European manufacturers came up with a method of producing even less expensive pressed glass and surpassed the Americans. When the Great Depression hit however, an Ohio firm began to mass produce its own version, which became aptly known as depression glass. It was so cheap to manufacture that the firm could offer it on the open market for pennies.

Many depression era Americans dreamed about owning the beautiful lamps Louis Comfort Tiffany was creating in New York. These art works might have been out of their reach, but smart manufacturers replicated his glass pieces with a cheap version offered to winners of carnival midway contests. Carnival glass was enormously popular, and the competition for market shares was intense. One result of this competition was glassware that glowed under UV light.

You don't have to be an expert in glass to recognize milk glass. It is something most people have seen in antique and vintage shops, but it was not originally an American product. The Venetians created the effect in the sixteen hundreds, and the English perfected it during the Victorian Era. Genuine milk glass can be yellow, pink, blue, black, and brown as well as white.

It is important to care for your glass collections correctly. This means not putting them in your dishwasher. The high temperature can crack and even break fragile pieces. You should only hand clean them using a mild detergent and soft drying cloth.

If you want to collect something, glassware might be a good choice. Most of it is affordable, and pieces can be displayed even with limited space. A lot of people love to browse antique and specialty shops in the hopes of finding the missing piece in their collection. It is not unusual for the glass to pass from generation to generation.




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