The basic technique for hand-made pressed glass was invented in 1830 and the machinary developed by Owens in 1903, and rapidly spread across Europe. In time it would conquer the world industry for the US giant, now called Owen-Illinois. Pressed glass machinery was also used by Leerdam, Maastricht and Boom to make bottles and jars, but the seams which remained after the machine-press were ugly and needed to be carefully hidden within the design to avoid rough edges. Pressed glass is not only cheap and easy to make, but also robust and long-lived, so both Leerdam and Maastricht were keen to develop flatware to exploit the process, but needed to develop products which minimised hand-finishing. As the machinary improved, the quality of the results improved too, making it increasingly possible to make a wider range of domestic glassware, and taking advantage of the additional toughness associated with 'hard glass'. Pressed glass is used for storage jars and bottles, car-mascots and car-headlamps,(etc, etc.), so many items have been 'overlooked' in this basic list, including the main lifeblood of the industrial production which was made under contract for industrial customers.

In the early 30's Leerdam developed the Graniver technique (grains of coloured glass pressed into a mold) which resulted in some classic designs. The 'Bevrijdingvaasje'(1948) was made in the workshop which usually made bicycle brakelights, demonstrating that artworks and functional objects are defined by the usage rather than the manufacture. In addition, there was also pressed glass from Kristalunie Maastricht and for a shorter time from Scailmont and Val-St-Lambert in Belgium. Walther (Dresden) and Sklo Union (Czechoslovakia) also sold hugely well in The Netherlands. (We have a good selection of them for sale at Hogelandshoeve). For comprehensive information and photographs of these, and other European pressed glass patterns we recommend The Pressed Glass Pavillon, Hamburg, or a visit to our Links page.

I do not use any pictures without copyright so I would be happy to hear from anyone prepared to donate images of the missing items!.Please contact me if you can offer a photo of the missing designs.