The Embassy Pattern, 1939
Designing It
The fluted stems of the Embassy pattern were inspired by the Ionic columns on the front of the Federal Building at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. The design was produced with ten styles of glasses and used in the Fair’s State Dining Room.
See examples in the American Glass study case in the Glass Pavilion Study Gallery and in Gallery 3.
Making It
As seen in the drawing, the designer intended the stem of the Embassypattern glasses to be in proportion to the bowl. However, because of time constraints, a single mold was made for the stem, to be used on all of the glasses, no matter their size. Sometimes practicality trumps design.
Glasses in the Embassy Pattern, 1939. Libbey Glass Company, subsidiary of Owens-Illinois Glass Company. Gift of Owens-Illinois, Inc., 1969.28, 1969.30
The Designer
Trained as an illustrator for advertisements, Walter Dorwin Teague (1883–1960) turned to the new field of industrial design in the mid-1920s. Highly regarded and with many prominent clients, he headed the design committee for the 1939 New York World’s Fair, for which he designed the Embassy tableware for Libbey Glass.