Goblet

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

With the development of new formulas and techniques, glass-pressing technology had improved markedly by the late 1840s. By this time, pressed tablewares were being produced in large matching sets and innumerable forms. During the mid-1850s, colorless glass and simple geometric patterns dominated. Catering to the demand for moderately-priced dining wares, the glass industry in the United States expanded widely, and numerous factories supplied less expensive pressed glassware to the growing market. At the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations at New York’s Crystal Palace in 1853, for example, the New England Glass Company exhibited 130 pieces of one design, "consisting of bowls, tumblers, champagnes, wines, and jelly glasses." This object belongs to one such service. Although the glass manufactory is not known, the glassware is very typical of the large services that were very popular with America’s middle class in the nineteenth century.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art