I recall reading a quote – I think made from a Fostoria executive in the 1970s – saying that their best selling drinking glasses were water goblets and sherbets. I remember buying a wedding gift of Libbey drinking glasses that included regular tumblers, lowball glasses (short tumblers with wider openings) and sherbets. Yes, sherbets!
Back in the depression era elegant glass stemware patterns included sherbets. So did most depression glass patterns, even those that had no tumblers or goblets in their piece assortment. Shapes varied. This lovely stem from Central glass has a graceful shape, indented then flared out. Notice the bowl itself is round.
Some patterns have sherbets that are more like small bowls, probably easier to use with ice cream, certainly less susceptible to knocking over. This next sherbet is Bowknot depression glass.
A sherbet from the 1960s pattern Indiana’s Wild Rose looks like a little bowl, and in fact Replacements calls it a “fruit cocktail”.
You’ll also see cone-shaped sherbets, such as this Diana etched sherbet from Cambridge. The elegant companies had many lovely shapes!
Stems vary too, and some are quite tall, as this tall sherbet from Fostoria. Of course one would need to be careful when using stemmed sherbets.
Larger elegant patterns often had two sizes of sherbets, tall and short as with Cambridge Rose Point. Cambridge made Rose Point for many years in various stem shapes as it was a very successful pattern. This first one is the tall sherbet in the 3500 stem line.
This next sherbet is also Rose Point line 3500 stem, notice the much shorter stem.
A few depression glass patterns have multiple sherbets, mostly those patterns that companies made for many years due to their popularity in the 1930s markets. Here are two sherbets in Hocking’s Cameo pattern. Hocking’s Mayfair pattern is another with multiple sherbets.
Some have short stems, some have no stems as in these next sherbets, all depression glass.
Federal made two different sherbets in their popular Madrid pattern, but they differ in how wide they are, not how tall or long the stems.
Elegant glass makers used all their arts on their stemware, including sherbets of course. Just to show off some of the lovely glassware from the 1920s-50s, let’s see a few of the gorgeous etched sherbets.
For some reason using these lovely glasses for sherbet or ice cream or fruit desserts is out of fashion. Instead, you have almost certainly seen sherbets used in weddings, either to drink champagne or in decorations on wrapping papers and the like. (In fact this shape is supposed to be a very bad fit for champagne, we’re supposed to use flutes to keep the bubbles and flavor intact.)
Of course if you do use stemmed sherbets for food, it makes sense to use a liner plate under them. The plate would catch drips and hold one’s spoon. We’ll look at liner plates in our next post.