Depression Glass

Depression glass marked a new incarnation of a style that preceded the incursion of glass blowing techniques. Pressed glass, around since the 1800s, lost some of its appeal to the masses with the advent of crystal in the 1900s. Then in the years before World War II, during a span of international economic decline of such devastation it would go down in history as the Great Depression, pressed glass gained a toehold on a failing economy.

It seems odd now to think of a piece of pressed glass coming to symbolize an era. However, such seems to have happened. The very name Depression glass, while it alludes to the glass’s molded nature, carries the same name as the era of its fame. The two are entwined.

The United States gave birth to the Great Depression, ushering it in on the day that sent stock markets plummeting, the splashy and horrifying Black Tuesday. National unemployment rose to 25 percent. To say money was tight, even in households that had a breadwinner, would be a huge understatement. Bleakness covered the landscape and the daily lives of American citizenry. The twinkle, innovation and fun that made the gay nineties gay and the roaring twenties roar seemed lost.

Depression glass, molded, mass-produced, translucent and colored was desirable first because it was affordable. Recognizing the product as a ready option for house proud wives and mothers with few others, Woolworths and other dime store venues carried the pieces. Between the 1920s and 1940s, when the manufacture of the glass ran its course, there were over a dozen companies manufacturing it. Such companies offered over a hundred different patterns, in a near dizzying array of colors; crystal, green, amber, ultra-marine, pink, yellow, red, and so many others.