"Whatever it is, serve it in glass!": color, gender, and class in pressed-glass tableware, 1925-1945
Date
2025
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
This thesis explores colorful pressed glass tableware produced in the United States from 1925 to 1945, objects that illuminate an intersection between industrial innovation, consumer culture, and working-class domestic life. This period covers the pressed-glass tableware industry’s response to the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris with the introduction of colorful, pressed glass tableware set. The project follows an arc through the peak of pressed glass’ popularity in the 1930s through the collapse of demand for colorful pressed tableware in the United States by the end of World War II. By studying these mass-produced objects, this paper examines how working- and middle-class women deployed material and color to craft domestic identities, embody personality and emotion in the kitchen, and mediate their relationship with household labor. ☐ This project begins by outlining technological advancements in glass production in the nineteenth century, particularly the development of mechanically aided pressing which transformed the industry and democratized access to glass. The resulting “glassification” of lower-income consumers implicated pressed glass directly in the inculcation of aspirational consumer groups into larger American value systems emphasizing tradition and history. While pressed glass mimicked expensive cut crystal at the turn of the twentieth century, this thesis argues that during the peak of its popularity in the 1920s and 1930s, companies in the upper Ohio River Valley produced innovative and distinctly modern glass tableware. Parallel to this changing industrial output, lower-income women developed a unique aesthetic language and use for these objects that challenged conceptions of good design and taste originating from wealthy consumers, deploying color and glass to alleviate drudgery and express satisfaction, comfort, and joy in their kitchens and dining rooms. ☐ Drawing on consumer advertising, shelter magazines, and an abundance of material culture evidence, the research demonstrates how glass manufacturers responded to diverse market demands among non-elite consumers. Companies like Fostoria and Heisey positioned their products at the intersection of modernity and tradition, creating forms that spoke to changing American dining practices and domestic spaces. This paper argues that their colorful glass enabled women to imbue gendered household tasks and spaces, especially the kitchen and dining room, with explicitly positive associations. Rather than viewing these mass-produced objects as cheap imitations of elite goods, this work reframes them as emblems of a “joyous materialism” through which women exercised agency, creativity, and care. ☐ The study concludes by examining how external forces created gendered narratives for glass tableware and its socially appropriate uses, arguing that post-war male consumers rejected color and mechanical production due to their explicit associations with female consumers. This analysis illuminates broader themes about gender, class, and consumer culture in early twentieth-century America, while offering new perspectives on how mass-produced objects served as tools for individual expression and identity formation.
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Keywords
American consumer society, American material culture, Color in design, Female consumers, Glass tableware, Kitchens and dining