Teal Pressed Glass Souvenir Tankard, Gilt Cathedral Rock Cartouche, Sedona, Arizona, Made in U.S.A., c. 1960–1990

The Piece

A small tankard in deep teal-blue pressed glass, heavy for its size and built like a miniature beer mug.

The body is panelled — broad flat facets running up the sides, each finishing in a rounded arch below a flared, slightly waved rim. Below, the glass steps out onto a wide skirted foot ringed with a fine band of beading. The handle is a thick squared loop with a generous finger opening.

On the front, a gilt cartouche: a shaped shield outlined in gold, enclosing a landscape of red-rock buttes above a creek with trees and brush along the bank, all drawn in gold line. Beneath it, in gold capitals, SEDONA, ARIZONA.

The rim carries a dark metallic band, toned almost to black.

Turn it over and the underside of the foot is embossed in raised letters around the ring: MADE IN U.S.A.

History & Provenance

The scene in the gold is the reason this was bought in the first place. Sedona sits in the red-rock country of the Verde Valley in central Arizona, where Oak Creek has cut down through layered sandstone to leave the formations that made the place famous — the buttes and spires in the cartouche, drawn from the classic view.

The object belongs to a genuinely American tradition: the souvenir tankard, sold at roadside trading posts, lodge gift shops and highway curio stores through the middle of the twentieth century, when the family car and the two-week vacation turned the Southwest into a destination. You drove, you stopped, you brought back a mug. Thousands of towns had one; the gold was applied over the fired glass by decorating shops that could change the scene and the place name from job to job.

A few things are worth stating precisely.

It is American-made and says so, embossed into the foot — not a printed sticker or a paper label but raised letters formed in the mould itself, which is the one mark on the piece that cannot have been added later.

There is no maker's name. Several large American glasshouses pressed tankards in this pattern for the souvenir trade, and this one carries no company mark, so it is offered unattributed.

And the gold is worn. The cartouche and the lettering are unfired or lightly fired surface gilding, which is how souvenir decoration was done, and it rubs. On this mug the outline and the place name survive clearly but a good deal of the interior detail has gone; the rim band has darkened and worn to a grey-black. Both are stated plainly below rather than photographed around.

Dated on the pressed form, the applied decoration and the embossed country marking: c. 1960–1990. Offered as a vintage souvenir piece rather than as an antique.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

Buy this one for the glass. That teal is a genuinely good colour — deep, saturated, and unlike anything currently in production — and the panelled body throws it into bands of light and shadow that shift as the mug turns. On a windowsill with sun behind it, it reads like a piece of coloured light.

The size makes it useful. It takes espresso or a short coffee, a small pour of whiskey or amaro, a votive candle, toothpicks or matches on a bar, brushes on a desk, or a few short-stemmed flowers on a sill.

It also carries a place, which most decorative glass does not. For anyone who grew up on Southwest road trips, honeymooned in Sedona, or collects Route 66 and roadside Americana, a mug with the red rocks on it is a specific memory rather than a generic object.

A note on care, and the decoration is the fragile part. Never put this in a dishwasher. The gold and the rim band sit on the surface of the glass rather than being fired deep into it, and dishwasher heat and detergent will take off what is left of them in a cycle or two. The glass would survive; the Sedona would not.

Hand wash in warm water with a mild soap, using a soft cloth and keeping it off the gilded areas as much as you can, then dry immediately. Use no abrasive pad, scouring cream or metal polish — polish will strip the darkened rim band rather than brighten it, and the toning is age rather than dirt.

Avoid sudden temperature changes: do not pour boiling liquid into it cold, and do not take it from hot to cold water. Pressed glass fails at thermal shock. It is not microwave or oven ware. Keep it out of prolonged direct sun, which will continue to fade the gold, and store it standing rather than stacked inside another vessel, where the rim takes the pressure.