Glass Encyclopaedia - Antique & Collectable Vintage Glass Guide
Welcome to our Glass Encyclopaedia, our very own identification guide to Antique & Vintage Collectable Glass. Over the years, as dealers in glassware, we have taken thousands of pictures of glass vases, bowls, paperweights, sculptures and other glassware. After we have sold an item, it seems a shame to delete those pictures, so we use them to create an encyclopaedia guide in the galleries shown below. We hope they will enable you discover more about the types of glass products that you are interested in collecting, or help you to identify a glass item you have come across. Please note, we are well aware that there are some gaps, for instance, we don't have much on French or American glass, this is simply because, as glass dealers in the UK, we don't come across that much of it, so we don't have many pictures with which to create a guide. Our glass encyclopaedia is aimed to be as accurate as possible. However, if you feel we have made a mistake, please contact us. We are constantly improving and extending our glass encyclopaedia and galleries, so please check back frequently.
Most of the glassware items listed in these sections are from our past sales, and are no longer available to buy. To see all antique + vintage collectable glass that we currently have in stock, please:
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When most people think of Italian glass, they think of the many manufacturers based on the Venetian island of Murano. But there is another area of Italy with a long history of glass production - the town of Empoli, in the Tuscany region, near Florence. There is evidence of glassware being produced in Empoli as far back as the thirteenth century. There are two main types of Empoli glass - "Verde" and "Cased". Verde (Italian for green) glass takes its name from the traditional green colour of Empoli glass, which was a result of the content of local sand used for glass production. Empoli manufacturers that produced Verde glassware include Vetrerie E. Taddei & C., Vetreria Etrusca, Vetreria Toso Bagnoli, CLAVE, and Vetrerie Empolesi. Later, cased glass became popular in Empoli, which consists of brightly coloured glass cased in a layer of clear glass, sometimes also having an internal layer of opaque white "Lattimo" glass. Some Empoli producers of cased glass are STELVIA, Cristalleria Fratelli Betti, Cristalleria Arno, CIVE, and SAVIA. There was, and still are, a large amount of manufacturers in the Empoli area involved in glass production, and it can often be difficult to identify designs by a particular maker, as any labels usually bore the name of importers, or simply read "Made in Italy". Companies that imported glass from Empoli include Alrose, Rossini, Guildcraft, Vimax, Enesco and Hans Geismar.
