The Historical Glass Museum in Redlands California is a jewelbox filled with a uniquely American invention, pressed glass. The technique to press glass in a mold for mass production of goods was invented in the United States in the 1820s.
By the end of the century, glass factories dotted the country creating useful and beautiful objects in a rainbow of colors. Glass colors in the 19th century depended on minerals that were added to the glass as well as the temperature the glass was heated to in the kiln. Famously uranium was added creating what is now termed “glowy-glass” or uv glass. You can borrow a blacklight from the docents and go on a “glowy-glass” scavenger hunt. Look for the corn vase, it is really spectacular. This museum has collections from every era of American Glass manufacturing. Early cut glass made to mimc crystal, pressed glass, carnival glass that aimed to bring the beauty of favrile glass to every home, art glass, kitchenware and even mid-century giftware with its bold colors and sleek lines.
The museum started as a passion project of Dixie Huckabee who founded the Historical Glass Museum Foundation in 1976. Many glass factories had gone out of business by this time, making American glass a less and less well-known art form. The foundation purchased the 1903 Victorian in part because of its many large windows, needed for proper light for glass displays. Lots and lots of work went into restoring the home and getting it ready to be a museum. It opened to the public in 1985 and for almost forty years have been doing the work of preserving a era in American manufacturing where beauty, form, function and affordability were one.
