Collect, Vintage, Modern, Retro Tumblers: Are You Addicted?

Do you love to collect vintage, retro, modern glassware and tumblers? Are you fascinates with the colorful glasses your grandmother had on her table when you visited for Sunday dinner? Do you find yourself walking into stores that sell vintage, retro, modern Eames era items? If you answered, yes, yes and yes to these questions, then you may be addicted to vintage retro modern icons of years passed.

Many people collect different kinds of retro, modern things ranging all the way from homes, to cars, to clothing, to household items. This article is going to provide you a bit of historical information on the vintage retro tumblers tumblers or glassware you collect..

Collect, Vintage, Modern, Retro Tumblers: History

There were many different glass companies that made the tumblers or glasses you collect today. These companies manufactured tumblers that were not decorated for many years. It seems like these companies started to add hand painted decorations to their tumblers somewhere around the mid 1920s to the mid 1930's. This may not seem to compute with those who collect painted tumblers as the majority of those who collect these tumblers think they were made in the 40s and 50s.

Some of the makers of the vintage retro tumblers people collect today were: Bartlett-Collins, the Federal Glass Company, the Imperial Glass Company, Anchor-Hocking, Libby, Macbeth-Evans Corning, West Virginia and Fire-king. Many other companies made glass tumblers, but these companies produced the largest number of the hand painted tumblers that people so love to collect these days.

The first method used to decorate vintage retro tumblers was painting them by hand. Bands were first painted on each tumbler and then flowers or fruit, or whatever design was painted. These designs were often painted by more than one artist. These early hand painted tumblers were also assembled into what were called "specialty sets such as bar service tumblers or casual beverage tumblers. The tumblers you collect continued to be painted by hand at many manufacturers even after the advent of machines.

To understand just how much manpower it took to hand paint these vintage, retro tumblers, the Bartlett-Collins Company at one time employed over 100 craftsmen to paint their tumblers. Take this number and multiply it by all of the many tumbler manufacturers and you will see it took at lot of people to create the tumblers that people collect.

There was a mass shift in the 1930's when machines were introduced into the manufacturing of the vintage,retro tumblers we know today. Mass production of tumblers became the way of the times. This mass production was helped along when the Kraft Cheese Company decided to package their cheese in what became known as Swankyswig glass container. When this happened, the boom of mass production was off and running. As an aside, Swankyswig glasses are highly collectible today.

At the same time as the mass production was taking off, so was the middle class population growing. This section of the population became very interested in the kind of cheaper glassware that was being mass produced especially because it was bright and colorful. Glass manufacturing companies picked up on the shift in the market and followed it making more and more colorful glassware and tumblers.

This brief history of the beginnings of the glassware and tumblers that have become so retro today is just a starting point. If you want to read more about vintage,retro tumblers, read through some of the resources included in this article.

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