Hand and Mind Blown: Colorful Vintage Glassware

Drop the Link

Jenna Hochman

If you had to pick just one genre of decor to collect for the rest of your days, which would it be and why is it glassware?

What makes glassware a solid "desert island" choice of decor is it's a broad enough category to include vases, lamps, stemware, tableware, storage, and more — keep scrolling and we'll prove it. Beyond these applications, the material literally shines as art objet: depending on the degree of translucence and transparency, glassware adds dimension to and distributes light throughout your space, much in the way mirrors and lamps do. The myriad raw materials (such as sand, soda ash, and limestone) and techniques (like glass-blowing, sand-blasting, or mechanical pressing) that comprise glass-making produce some stunning variation in shape and color. It's this variation that makes glassware endlessly collectible, the kind of assortment you arrange and proudly display to make your end table, étagère, or bar cart sing.

As I began compiling our picks for the most stunning (and available!) vintage glassware, I noticed a pattern: the selection was shaping up to be a brightly-hued bunch, a rainbow-colored array of glass baubles, vessels, and stems. My gut explanation for this is that I was naturally drawn to colorful glassware for its ability to elicit joy. If we look to history, we'll see this proven: in the midst of economic hardship in the US in the 1930s, colorful molded glassware was mass produced inexpensively to stimulate the glass industry and provide jobs. As a result, depression glassware filled people's homes with vibrant hues, a much-needed mood boost in dreary financial times. Sound familiar?

The more formal criteria considered for this selection boils down to beauty and utility: Is the objet a visual delight? Does it check more than one box, serve more than one function? See our picks that fit the mold (get it?) below.

Keep scrolling to bring color and cheer into your home.

Murano fused glass trinket dish via Shop Modern Nostalgic (Sacramento, CA).

MCM scalloped-edge amber Chip & Dip via Object Glacé (Brooklyn, NY).

Millefiori glass vessel at TOP, green squiggle stem martini glasses at BOTTOM via Day and Age (Portland, OR).

Murano sommerso glass lamp by Flavio Poli via Antik Design (Putignano, IT).

Color-blocked dessert bowl or catchall at TOP, red drip-stemmed martini glasses at BOTTOM via Studio 4E (Santa Barbara, CA).

Erik Hoglund-inspired emerald face perfume bottle via Last Chance Vtg (Miami, FL).

Multicolor Libbey Z-stem margarita glasses via Object Superette (Los Angeles and Orange County, CA).

Blue flame vase at TOP, smoke-effect blue coupes at BOTTOM via Pretty Space Happy Face (Brooklyn, NY)

70s Andre Delatte-style speckled glass mushroom lamp via FORM (Los Angeles, CA).

Pink lace edge depression glass dish via Ramona's Market (Chicago, IL).

Hand-blown grey/green decanter and stopper via samaan (San Jose, CA).

Cobalt blue and emerald coil artist glass vase via Rosemary Home (New York, NY).

Crinkle glass plates in baby blue, kelly green, blush, and olive via Quite Nice Shop (Oakland, CA).

Pfaltzgraff wine goblets in teal and fuchsia at TOP, Ocean Breeze colorway at BOTTOM via Love Lila Vintage.

Riihimäki Amethyst Vase by Tamara Aladin via Mid City Vintage (Los Angeles, CA).

Freeform golden Blenko dish via milg. (Brooklyn, NY)
Jenna is the Content Lead at Dendwell.
Photo and Riihimäki glassware via Aquarius Retro

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Dendwell was a rigorously curated marketplace and magazine for vintage decor. From 2020 - 2022, we dug into the trends, tastemakers, and how-to's of vintage object collection. This is our archive site, and is no longer being updated.