You begin to interest me…vaguely
Remember the Silver Foliage glassware by Libbey? Well here’s the more popular Golden Foliage in a less common shape: the sugar and creamer set with a metal caddy, and the 16 oz. hostess pitcher with a removable handle. Found, unexpectedly, at a freecycle event.
The other fab Jazz Age exhibit at the Albany Institute of History and Art is Romancing the Rails: Train Travel in the 1920s and 1930s, which focuses on the New York Central Railroad.
It’s cool to see the original paintings for some of their now classic advertising posters. There’s also a lot of items from industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss’s work on the 20th Century Limited, “The Most Famous Train in the World.” Dreyfuss designed everything from the streamlined locomotives to the dinner plates.
Romancing the Rails is on display through February 2022.
Featured image: Observation Car design for the 20th Century Limited by Henry Dreyfuss, gouache on paper, 1938.
The perfect host knows the perfect glass for each drink, but in case you forgot, Libbey provides a visual reminder in this 1962 ad (glasses start at 15¢!). See more Libbey barware here.
Not that long ago, I picked up a set of drinking glasses and matching ice bucket from an antique store down the shore. These glasses were made by the Libbey Glass Company and it’s easy to find sets of this pattern, Silver Foliage, on eBay, Etsy, and other sites, especially if you search for “vintage Midcentury Modern glasses.” It’s no surprise, since Libbey was, and still is, one of the biggest manufacturers of drinking glasses.
Libbey’s most popular patterns were sold for decades. According to some internet sources, Silver Foliage was produced between 1957 and 1978. The Golden Foliage pattern was introduced the same year and produced through 1982 – so those vintage Midcentury Modern glasses on eBay could actually be from the Disco Era.
Golden Foliage was so popular that other manufacturers copied the design on their own glasses (our set has Libbey’s cursive “L” maker’s mark on the bottom of each glass). Meanwhile, Libbey was busy putting the two foliage patterns on different styles and types of glassware (check out the tray and carafe in the ad below). You could probably develop a detailed chronology of Silver Foliage by the yearly catalogs put out by the company; unfortunately they do not seem to be available online.
