Federal Glass Company

The Federal Glass Company was founded in 1900, in Columbus, Ohio and is one of the best known Depression Glass manufacturers.

The company originally made hand-blown glassware often decorated with pin-etched designs. By the 1920’s the Federal Glass Company had converted to mass manufacturing techniques, allowing them to produce large amounts of highly decorative glass types for a comparatively low price.

Particularly popular were forms which mimicked the effects of cut glass crystal, providing faceted surfaces in intricate geometric patterns and elegant embossed bas relief floral patterns. Combined with a growing palette of colors, some vivid and bright, some in soft, fashionable pastels, some in the opaque tones of various milk glasses, the fancy, lacy, flashing designs of pressed glass were a hit.

Items were used as free gifts and “saving stamp” items by grocery stores to attract customers, by carnivals as game prizes, and bought by young housewives just setting up their households. Depression glass was a reliable, lovely standby of the middle and lower class table from the 20s into the 60s, and one of the most popular producer of all was the Federal Glass Company.

The pressed glass imitating cut glass was particularly popular. Inexpensive, colorful, and elegant, it appealed to many families hungry for a grace-note of beauty in lives often stripped down to bare necessities. Graceful, glittering pieces of tableware were made available for prices that competed effectively with all but the very lowest value utensils.

Many farm tables and kitchens throughout America were graced with Federal Glass Company pitchers, butter dishes, serving plates, dessert plates, and drinking glasses. Federal Glass jars, jugs, vases and bottles sat in windows, their cobalt blue, leaf green, and softly glowing pink glass catching fire in the sun.

As intricate as a crocheted lace doily, with a shine and color no doily ever had, the glass was a pleasure -- a pleasure that became, in time, the center of a living collectors’ community, as new generations fell in love with the delicate treasures.

During the Depression years Federal also produced a comparatively smaller amount of iridescent glassware called Normandie. Technically not “Carnival Glass” which gets its rainbow sheen from a somewhat different manufacturing technique, it is visually similar, having an opalescent glow. Later, in the 1950s, iridescent glasses would become popular again, and Federal would return to manufacturing such patterns as Iris and Anniversary.

While a large number of glass producing factories turned out the wide array of glassware now known as Depression Glass, Federal was the most popular and successful in the era, though it had a second flowering in the fifties and sixties. It continues to survive today, producing a range of products.

Federal Glass Patterns Include:
Colonial Fluted
Columbia
Diana
Georgian Love Birds
Madrid
Mayfair Federal
Normandie - Bouquet & Lattice
Parrot Sylvan
Patrician
Petal
Raindrops
Rosemary
Sharon Cabbage Rose

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