Libbey Glass Collectibles

 Libbey Glass Company began their business life named the New England Glass Company.
They produced a wide variety of glassware, and in the end expanded their business to sheet glass and windshields, but are more widely known for their cut glass and shaped drinking glasses.

The company was, in the beginning producing multiple items including mercury glass, colored art glass, pressed glass, and a wide array of things like doorknobs and railroad lamps.
The glassware of the Libbey company was quite often decorated with gilding but was  also  decorated with cutting and engraving as well, making it well sought after.

Though the products were quality,  the company found itself in over their heads financially and was sold in 1877 to William Libbey, and was renamed accordingly, and when the purchaser passes away just five years later, it was passed along to his son.

 Edward Libbey moved production to Toledo, Ohio in 1888, where raw materials were readily available and was instrumental in making Toledo Ohio synonymous with glass production.

It was also at this point that the company became more lucrative, with the invention of a machine that could do a great deal of the world.. Workers were fired and the company, while popular, became less so in the immediate area.

(excerpted from History of Ohio )" The Libbey Glass Company became even more profitable after Michael Owens, an inventor from Newark, Ohio, joined the firm. Owens developed a machine that could automatically produce bottles, tumblers, and glass chimneys. This invention dramatically increased production. It also lowered manufacturing costs, as the company was able to fire workers now that machines could do the work instead."

The sword under the  old signature in Libbeys glass mark is their silent nod to the renowned city of steel,  Toledo, Spain, from which the name of the city in Ohio originates.

Libbey hired Joseph Locke in 1882, who was a designer from England to take over the design works and while he worked at Libbey he patented several items that are quite collected .  Some of those items include Peach Blow, Maize and Pomona,as well as Amberina, the Victorian era glass that offers the very distinctive amber to red shading as its trademark

 Libbey produced it  right up to the new century.
 It was a difficult type of glass to make since the red shading came from the use of actual gold and it was costly to make, making it quite expensive to produce, but it did give the company recognition world wide.
 In the 1920s, Amberina was in production again for a short time, and is signed quite often so the collector can identify it.

Libbey was  also the number one producer of what was called  Brilliant Cut glass from about 1878 to 1915 or 1916.The Brilliant cut was extremely highly leaded, and rumors had it using as much as sixty percent lead in the formula for its creatioin.
Lead softened the glass, making it easier to cut and added sparkle, weight and giving it that wonderful clarity of ring when lightly struck.
At the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904 the company won prizes for exhibitions of their fine glass.

The war years were slim for everyone and LIbbey stuck to making hard to break glassware for hotels and restaurants, however in about 1933 they began producing fabulous stemware, which today is sought after for collection world wide.

 The designer Douglas Nash, a former Tiffany’s man, was employed to breathe life into the  market for hand crafted high-end stemware.
 Some of the new offerings of the Libbey company that were made under Nash’s tutelage included  the Art Deco  stems, among them American Prestige, Knickerbocker, Syncopation (an ice cube shaped stem, is one of the rarest to find  today), and Embassy. Embassy was an eagle-and-star etch  that was designed especially for the US Pavilion at the ’39 World’s Fair.

The Silhouette line c.1933 by Douglas Nash had a different animal decorating the stem of each type of glass including cats, greyhounds and monkeys, with each different type of glass featuring a different animal.
 The Silhouette glassware stems came with a selection of colors: black, opalescent, or frosted crystal.

The Skyscraper stemsare very collectible and one type of Nash’s designs, the Victoria cameo etch, took more than 80 hours of engraving per glass and sold for about 2000 dollars per dozen glasses. This of course wasn’t a big seller during the depression and production of it ended in 1935.
All of these glasses, including the Brilliant cut are sought after by collectors today and fortunately with the companies mark, can be readily identified.
Libbey glassware has left its mark on collectors and given us a great deal to look for.