About Barware

Elegant glass is glassware made during the Depression Era, and well through the 1970s. It is typically differentiated from Depression glass by quality; elegant glass, as the name suggests, was a much more high-quality form of glassware, making it valuable for the time and even more valuable today. Antique stores sometimes carry elegant glass, as do firms which specialize in glassware, and it can be purchased at auction and through collectors’ organizations as well.

Defining elegant glass can be a bit challenging. As a general rule, people use the term “elegant glass” to describe glass which was made by hand, by artisans, separating it from mass-produced Depression glass, which was designed to be as cheap as possible. Elegant glass would have been costly, but like Depression glass, it came in a range of colors and was often heavily faceted. Elegant glass was sometimes also acid-etched to create patterns and designs.

This form of glassware was most commonly found in upscale department stores and shops which supplied goods for private homes. It was designed as an alternative to crystal and china, which would have been extremely expensive; elegant glass was in a sense a middle-ground between goods of very high quality and expense, and more mundane housewares. As a result, it appealed primarily to people in the middle and upper classes, as people in the lower classes could not afford elegant glass.

Tags: glass stemware, Glassware, highball glasses