Continued from homepage

Our most popular pages in August, and more signs of the end of the recession around the world

Interesting to look at the statistics over the last month and see that two of our most viewed pages deal with how to spot a fake piece of vintage art glass and how to best display vintage art glass. You're not just coming to this site to buy glass, you're coming to learn about glass, and that's fine with us.

We take a lot of queries from people who want to know more about their glass, and, time permitting, we'll help if we can, (even if you are just enquiring so you can try to sell it ).

As I suspected in July, people are starting to buy vintage art glass again. We've sold more in the last month than we did in the whole of the previous four months.

I find it interesting to see where the sales are coming from - Netherlands, Australia, USA, UK, USA, USA, and Finland in recent times. Good to see our US customers starting to buy again. We've also had people starting to ask whether we can get them a particular piece that they are looking for, (often a design that we've sold in the past.)

We're having a lot of fun with this site, and the feedback we get suggests that it's offering a useful service. We hope you enjoy it.

Kind regards,

Peter Hattaway
25 August 2009

PS. Just to reiterate what we're trying to do here: we try to offer high quality, good value, midcentury Scandinavian and Italian glass, so you don't have to learn from bitter experience. Buy from us and you avoid the misdescribed pieces, the poor designs, the damaged or repaired pieces, and the fakes. You can have confidence that we know what we're selling, we describe it honestly and fully, and there will be no unpleasant surprises. And if for any reason you find you don't love a piece you've bought from us, we stand behind our guarantee.

Budget vintage art glass and new listings on Modernistglass.com

Sales of just about everything have taken a knock in 2008 and 2009 as the world's economy was hit by the consequences of the near-meltdown in the world's major financial markets. The USA has been hit particularly badly by the recession, and we had a particularly big drop in our sales to that country, but sales to all parts of the world were affected.

As a result, we reduced our activities, took some time off, and concentrated on other business. Our product - art glass from half a century ago - doesn't decay or perish, it just becomes scarcer.

We haven't generally reduced our prices, though we're a little more open to discussion about prices on some pieces. And we have also started another website to offer a cheaper option for our customers. I hope you'll check out http://www.midcenturyglass.com. Our colleagues and friends, Pernilla and Hans, are scouring the fleamarkets of Sweden looking for bargains that they can pass on for less than US150. They sell them with fewer frills - less explanation of history and manufacturing techniques - but still with our trustworthy quality and service, and with the same money-back guarantee if you are not happy.

However, in July 2009, as I write this, I'm starting to feel as though normal business is starting to resume, so I think it's time to start listing fresh pieces on Modernistglass.com. Confidence is rising. Many people have found that their jobs and their income haven't been badly affected, and these people are looking for good deals. Buyers in some countries are finding that their currencies have risen against the US dollar and are looking for beautiful glass to buy. If that's you, you've come to the right place. Take your time on the site. Check us out. And please don't forget to bookmark our site so you can keep coming back.

Kind regards,

Peter Hattaway
Modernistglass.com
July 2009

Swedish Post lowers shipping costs on items under 2kg

Well done Swedish Post. Prices on pieces which, when packed, come in at 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) or under, are now at least 30% cheaper. Most of our glass is shipped from Sweden, so that's good news for us and good news for our customers.

CONGRATULATIONS to our Swedish colleagues, Pernilla and Hans

Proud parents of another baby girl, Esther, on 20 June 2008.

Photo by Hans

Subscribe to our mailing list and be the first to see our new listings

(please note that when the world went into recession in late 2008 we stopped listing in volumes that justified sending out previews, but as of July 2009 we're listing again and we hope to start sending previews again soon)

To get the earliest possible chance to see the preview, subscribe to our mailing list, in the left-hand column of any page of our website. Every month, we'll send you a link to some beautiful glass and some interesting information about it. Even if you never intend to buy anything, you'll brighten up your day by seeing and learning some more about some beautiful art glass.

"When I opened the box, the glass was so beautiful that I cried."

Who wouldn't love selling a product where you can get feedback like this? We don't get it every time, but we were pretty pleased to get it once - how many retailers did you ever hear of who made a customer cry with joy?

If you want to learn more about Scandinavian and Italian mid-century vintage art glass, and work out what you should be buying, we think this website is one of the best resources on the Internet. We used to try to list fresh pieces every day but at the moment we're trying to go with the big listing once a month idea - see above.

If you have questions, feel free to ask! And if you want to build a wonderful collection, tell us, and we'll help make it happen.

As you've probably seen, there is much more "vintage" art glass for sale on the Internet which is wrongly described than vintage art glass which is described correctly. Look at our site. You'll see that we know what we're doing. We don't buy junk and try to pass it off as treasure. We also pack really well. We've had thousands and thousands of pieces of glass sent to us through the post. We know the heartbreak of receiving a box that clinks with the sound of broken glass. We therefore pack really carefully ourselves, and of all the glass we've shipped, we've only had one breakage.

We have a money-back guarantee. If you don't love it, tell us straight away, then send it back, and we'll give you your money back.

Kind regards,

Viv and Peter Hattaway
Directors
Modernistglass.com Ltd

Some questions you might have

What is modernist glass?
Where is our glass located? What's our Swedish connection?
What makes glass an inherently beautiful art form?
Why is mid-century art glass such a bargain?
Why is vintage art glass an ethical purchase?
How do I use this site?

What is modernist glass?

"Since we are complicated beings, let us at least be surrounded by simple objects, otherwise... what a difficult life!" Alberto Meda, modern designer (1945- )

The message in Modernist design is, "life is complex so remove the complication by surrounding yourself with things that are beautiful but simple." I think a lot of us can relate to that. So modernist glass tends to be elegantly simple.

That ties in with what we're trying to do in this business. We want to make your life easy and simple. It's like finding a good tradesman. When you find a plumber, say, who is honest and competent, and wants your business for the long term, you go back to him (or her) again and again, and you recommend him to your friends. We aim to be the equivalent in glass dealers.

Or here's another example: we know that when we go to a particular wine retailer in our city, we can trust the owners to point us to the best deal in a particular style of wine and price range. They can judge better than us because they taste a lot more wine than us; they have an incentive to direct us to something that we will like, so we keep coming back; and we know that they know their stuff because we learnt about wine at their regular Tuesday night tastings (before we had kids and our social life stopped). Again, we aim to be the equivalent in glass dealers.

Where is our glass located? What's our Swedish connection?

The test of good service is when something goes wrong. We once bought a piece of glass from a glass trader named Pernilla in Sweden. There was a minor problem with it but we were very, very impressed with the way she bent over backwards to make it right. "This," we thought, "is a person we can do business with." Several years later, Pernilla, (who we've still never met) is a trusted friend and business colleague.

We generally buy in Europe, then have it sent to Pernilla, who photographs, weighs, measures, and checks the pieces for damage or imperfections. The details and pictures go onto our website, along with our words. When the piece sells, Pernilla packs it and ships it. The process ensures that we can source glass from Europe which wouldn't otherwise be easily manageable. It's a wonderful example of the Internet making the world a smaller, friendlier, and more efficient place. Importantly, it reduces shipping costs, and the end prices, for our customers. It's one of the reasons that we can compete realistically on price and quality with retailers anywhere else in the world, even though we are based in New Zealand, far from many of our customers.

What makes glass an inherently beautiful art form?

Some materials are inherently beautiful - gold, silver, diamond... and glass. Glass is fluid and refracts and reflects light. The way it flows, lends itself to being made into beautiful objects, and good designers and craftsmen can make even functional and mundane objects which are things of beauty. Of course, there is plenty of ugly glass around, too. Our motto, and our guiding principle is, "we only sell beautiful glass," so that's our number 1 criterion in sourcing glass for our website.

A lot of modern art provokes and disturbs and challenges. There's certainly a place for this, but in limited doses. In my house I generally want things that are beautiful and interesting and fun and make me feel happy. It can provoke and challenge me too, but it has to be beautiful. Why surround yourself with things that are not beautiful?

Why is mid-century art glass such a bargain?

In a nutshell, it's because relatively few people realise yet that it is a bargain. It's the advantage of vintage. Say that 50 years ago, someone paid quite a lot of money for a beautiful object. It sat in grandma's house for 50 years, and then was sold off cheap. But it's still beautiful and stylish and very very collectable, if you can recognise its value and beauty. Ironically, it's often cheaper than art glass made today, even when the art glass made today tries to mimic vintage techniques and designs.

The 1940s to the 1970s was a dramatic period in the history of modern design - the time of a flowering of creativity in Italian and Scandinavian glass after the Second World War. It's the period when the glassblowers handed over the design role to trained designers, and modern design met traditional craftsmanship to create wonderful works of glass art. From around the 1970s, those traditional skills began to be lost as automation entered the glass industry and made craftsmanship uneconomic. Hand-made, mouth-blown glass, with slight variations from piece to piece, is always, in our view, superior to glass made by machine.

The cost of real craftsmanship today is the reason that quality modern mouth-blown glass is often much more expensive than vintage mouth-blown art glass. Buy the original!

We believe vintage glass is going to boom. It's really only just starting to be collected. We believe that it must appreciate. We believe we're in at the start of a flood of demand for mid-century art glass. Most people don't realise that glass can be as beautiful as it is. When we show it to them, they want some. But of course, every day there's less and less of it.

Why is vintage art glass an ethical purchase?

It may be overstating things to claim that you can save the planet by buying vintage glass, but essentially this is a form of recycling. Vintage glass doesn't burn any new energy; it's already made. And we pack using recycled material.

How do I use this site?

Glass for sale shows everything we have for sale on the site, in reverse order (most recently listed first), 10 to a page. Most people go through page by page, opening up particular pieces they like the look of. Many pieces will include links to other pieces by the same maker or designer.

Alternatively, you can click on any piece of glass, then click the Previous or Next link at the top of the page to move through the site, piece by piece.