JE owns an elegant Art Deco green glass decanter trimmed with gold leaf with an eleven inch clear glass stopper. It likely originated in Italy or Czechoslovakia in the 1930s or 1940s. Art Deco glass with gold became a signature of these two glassmaking centers.
The shape is not the kind we associate with wine decanters used for fine reds. Instead this shape held spirits, and likely clear spirits such as gin or vodka. It probably came as part of a bar set that included matching glassware. Sets like these exploded onto the American scene after Prohibition ended in 1933. Happy to drink again, Americans enjoyed fancy barware and home bars in custom bespoke fine furniture cabinets. Seeing a decanter like this makes me think of Cole Porter’s “I Get a Kick Out of You,” first performed on Broadway in the show Anything Goes a year after Prohibition ended. “I get no kick from champagne/Mere alcohol doesn’t thrill me at all/So tell me why should it be true? /That I get a Kick out of you….”
Decanter History
The decanter’s history stretches back to Greece and Rome when your servant couldn’t lift the heavy clay wine amphora to the reclining dining couches. They used a smaller vessel made of glass, in the best households. Of course, the shape mattered because the wine needed to breathe. The difference between a decanter and a carafe is that a decanter has a stopper, useful during a long Classical Roman dinner party to keep the wine fresh. The distinction is made today of the two types of wine vessels.
Wine shipped from Italy or France grew in popularity in England in the 17th century. Because of the travel rigors one needed to clear the stirred up wine of sediments before serving. A British inventor who loved Venice, George Ravenscroft, brought a glassmaking formula over from Murano in 1676 to make crystalline clear glass (leaded glass). So people saw the wine’s sediments and residues when decanted into one of his decanters. That sediment tasted bitter.
Venetians also rediscovered the shape of the glass decanter in the 15th century, the Italian Renaissance. The wide bodied bowl exposed the wine to air and the long neck kept scents inside. Venetians invented types of necks for types of wines. Those included Standard neck, and the Cornett, Duck, and Swan necks. Ravenscroft also “borrowed” this shape and brought his “invention” to London where it changed the marketing of wine.
Decanting Colored Spirits
Previously, wine “lived” in dark glass bottles. Suddenly once cloudy wine could sell. Decanters today are still used as both a symbol and, for some heavier bodied reds, as a preference. The shape remained the same since the 17th century, a narrow neck and a wide bodied bowl. The narrow neck of the decanter keeps the aromas in the wine, but lets the tannins dissipate when exposed to oxygen across the expanse of the bowl.
Experts say the use of a decanter gives much the same result as that ostentatious but functional “swirl” of wine in a properly shaped wine glass. A wine snob might swirl a glass to stimulate the oxidation process, and to trigger the release of aromatic compounds in the wine.
JE’s decanter probably didn’t hold colored spirits. People prized and displayed the pure green because it contained traces of Uranium, popular until World War II when it became critical for the war effort. If somebody poured colored spirits into green glass, the glory of the green color didn’t shine through. But all these spirits were decanted in the mid-20th century for your 1930s classy home bar: run, cognac, bourbon, whiskey, tequila, rye, brandy, and Armagnac.
You can store spirits in a stoppered decanter for up to two years, opposed to wine which one serves after two hours from a decanter. In fact, light bodied reds such as zinfandels only need 20-30 minutes exposure to oxygen; it is the full bodied wines like Cabernet Sauvignon which may require an hour or two in a decanter. But wine experts differ on this. JE’s decanter, because of that fabulous stopper, is worth $300. But I bet you can picture it on an Art Deco style Booze Cabinet as it helped pour out that long awaited Post Prohibition gin.