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For centuries wine has been served at table out of expensive and often elaborate serving vessels. The unrivalled transparency of lead crystal, invented in late seventeenth-century England, led to glass, rather than silver or ceramics, increasingly being used as the favoured material.

Although initially influenced by the contemporary wine bottle, from the middle of the eighteenth century the design of decanters became ever more subject to changing fashions. This book traces the developments and changing styles of these most elegant and useful pieces of glass tableware from the mid Georgian period to the Art Deco period of the 1930s. The many illustrations show the wide variety of decanters still available outside museum and private collections.

Softcover; A5; 48pp

About the Author:

David Leigh has been passionately interested in antique glass since childhood. He has for nearly three decades been a partner in Laurie Leigh Antiques of Oxford, the family business specialising in antique table glass. He is also a professional musician, making his debut at the Wigmore Hall, London, in 1981 as a harpsichordist. He has given many recitals in England (including two very successful appearances at the Bath International Festival) and various parts of Europe and the United States. Apart from his work as a recitalist, he is renowned for his restoration work on antique keyboard instruments. He is making a series of recordings for Acanthus Recordings on some of the antique harpsichords that he has restored. Three CDs are currently available under the title Harpsichords: Historic, Rare and Unique.