A late 19th-Century glassware typically hand made, elaborately decorated, having more than one color and expensive.
Art Glass reflected sophisticated technological advancement and was popular because it served Victorian-era taste for fancy, decorative items. Pieces have color shading achieved by heat variations and chemicals.
Colorations include peach, coral, opaque white, pink-to-yellow, rose amber, and blue-grey to pink. Amberina, made by the New England Glass Company from 1883 to 1888 was the earliest shaded glassware.
In 1917, Libbey Glass Company, a successor company, reissued it. The Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York, features a wide collection of Art Glass.
Reaction against Art Glass was Art Nouveau Glass made famous in the 1890s by New York jeweler, Louis Comfort Tiffany.
Favrile glass by Tiffany was irridescent, classical in style, and patterned on ancient glasses that were made from being buried for centuries in damp soil.