Vintage Gold Encrusted Wine Goblets — Set of 5, Optic Panel Bowls, Gilded Feet

Five wine goblets with a wide band of encrusted gold at the rim — scrolling vines and small rosettes between two rows of beading, raised so you can feel the pattern under a fingertip. That is gold encrusting, not a printed line: the glass was acid-etched first and the gold laid into the bite, which is why it stands proud and holds detail.

Below it runs a second, wider gold band, stepped rather than straight — it follows the tops of the optic panels, so it rises and falls around the bowl like a little battlement. And the foot carries a gold rim of its own. Three separate passes of gilding on one glass.

Condition is lovely. The gold is complete all the way round on all five — rim band, stepped band and foot — with no loss and no rubbed patches. What it has done is mellow. Fired gold does not stay brassy; after this many years it settles into a warm, quiet colour, and these have gone exactly that way. It is the difference between a gold that shouts and a gold that glows, and it is not something you can buy new. No chips, no cracks, no cloudiness.

Under all of it the bowl is blown into wide vertical optic panels, so the light breaks up as you turn it. A slim drawn stem with a small collar, on a plain polished foot. Six and a half inches tall.

Unmarked. Bands like this were put on blanks by several American decorating houses from about 1915 into the 1950s, and none of the five carries a mark, so no maker is claimed and no pattern name is invented. Circa 1920s–1940s, read from the encrusted work, the optic panel and the drawn stem rather than from a mark.

One care note, honestly: encrusted gold is not dishwasher-safe and never was. Wash these by hand in warm water and they will outlast all of us; put them through a cycle and the gold goes.