Amberina Pressed Glass Bowl, Ruby Shading to Amber, Vertical Ribs with a Bead-and-Scallop Rim and a Rayed Star Foot, American, c. 1955–1980

The Piece

A low round bowl in amberina — glass that runs from deep ruby at the rim to clear amber at the foot, in one continuous passage with no seam and no edge where the colours meet.

The body is pressed in vertical ribs, thirty-odd of them, rising from the foot and finishing in a bead-and-scallop rim that rolls over in a row of rounded lobes.

It stands on a low moulded foot, and the underside carries a rayed star pressed into the base inside a raised bearing ring.

The colour is in the glass, not on it. Ruby holds the top third, breaks into orange through the middle, and clears to pale amber by the foot. There is no line anywhere in that transition, which is the whole point and the thing that separates real amberina from imitations of it.

Put a light above it and it stops being a bowl. The ribs act as lenses and throw a rosette of red and gold across whatever it stands on — a disc of alternating light and shadow considerably wider than the bowl itself. It is the best thing this object does and no photograph taken in flat light will show it.

History & Provenance

Amberina was patented in 1883 by Joseph Locke and Edward Libbey at the New England Glass Works in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and it is one of the few genuinely American contributions to the history of decorative glass.

The trick is gold and heat. The batch carries colloidal gold, invisible in the amber glass as it comes from the furnace. The finished piece is then reheated at the top before it cools, and wherever that heat reaches, the suspended gold precipitates and strikes to ruby. Everything the heat missed stays amber. One object, one batch of glass, two colours, and no join — because there is nothing to join.

This is why the transition has no edge, and why the colour is permanent. Imitations of amberina are flashed: a red layer laid over an amber blank, which stops at a visible line, wears thin on raised edges and can be scratched through at the rim. Struck amberina cannot be scratched off, does not wear at the high points, and will not fade in sunlight. The colour is a structural property of the glass rather than a coating on it.

Amberina was made both blown and pressed from the beginning. The New England Glass Works produced blown art glass; Hobbs, Brockunier & Co. of Wheeling were licensed under the patent and made theirs chiefly as pressed ware. Mt. Washington produced a version under the name Rose Amber until an injunction in 1886 stopped them. So pressed amberina is not a later corruption of the idea — it was part of it from the first years.

The pattern came back in the twentieth century, when the American pressed-glass houses revived amberina for the mid-century table and gift market. That revival is where this bowl belongs.

Dated on the construction rather than the colour: a moulded rayed star to the base, a moulded bead-and-scallop rim, and regular mould ribs with rounded tops place it in the twentieth-century American pressed amberina revival rather than among the blown art glass of the 1880s. c. 1955–1980. The bowl carries no maker’s mark of any kind and is offered unattributed.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

Put it under a light. Everything else about this bowl is secondary to that.

A downlight, a picture light, a table lamp with the shade above it, a window with afternoon sun — and the ribs throw a wide rosette of red and gold across the surface beneath, wider than the bowl and considerably more interesting than it. Most glass looks good lit. This one draws.

It is an unusually useful shape. Eight inches across and three and a half deep is the size that holds oranges and lemons on a kitchen counter, or clementines at Christmas, and the colour flatters fruit in a way a clear bowl cannot. Fill it and the amber base disappears under whatever is in it while the ruby rim stays.

On a hall table it takes keys, sunglasses and post. On a dresser it takes jewellery. In a bathroom it holds soaps or rolled flannels. It is heavy-bottomed enough not to skate and shallow enough to reach into without looking.

Empty, it is a colour object. Red is the hardest colour to introduce into a room without committing to it — paint it and you have made a decision, but a red bowl can be moved. This one reads warm rather than loud, because it is ruby resolving into amber rather than a flat red, and it sits well with brass, walnut, oak and cream.

It also earns a place on a Christmas table with no seasonal decoration required. Ruby and gold in one object, doing it honestly.

And the colour will outlive you. Struck amberina does not fade, because the ruby is precipitated gold suspended inside the glass rather than a stain on the surface. A window seat will not hurt it, which is not true of most coloured glass and is not true of any flashed imitation of this one.

A note on care. Hand wash only, in warm water with a little dish soap, and dry it with a soft cloth. Never a dishwasher: the detergent and the heat cycle together etch glass permanently, and a bowl whose entire appeal is optical clarity is exactly the wrong thing to cloud.

Avoid sudden temperature change. Do not take it from a cold room and fill it with hot water, and do not put it in an oven or a freezer. Pressed glass holds internal stress from the mould and thermal shock finds it.

Do not use abrasive powders, scouring pads or anything gritty. The ribs and the pressed star trap grit and the scratches will not come out. A soft brush gets into the flutes perfectly well.

Dry it before it goes away, and store it upright rather than nested inside another bowl — glass rims resting against glass is how scallops get chipped in a cupboard.