Are coupes or flutes more common?

Coupes. Bowls, coupes and saucers together appear in 114 titles on Sellingantiques, against 51 for flutes. The shallow bowl became the standard party glass through the Victorian and Edwardian years, which is the period the archive is thickest in. Flutes are still a steady strand, roughly one listing in six.

How old are most of these glasses?

The dated field runs from 1700 to 1950, with 211 of 370 listings carrying a clean year. The decade labels cluster in the 1880s, 1900s, 1910s and 1920s. So the bulk of the material sits between about 1850 and 1930. Labels like Victorian, Edwardian and Georgian are broad buckets rather than firm dates.

What does harlequin mean in a set?

It means the glasses in the set differ from one another rather than matching. Seventeen titles use the word, and almost every one is a set of six. Dealers flag it because a fully matched set sits at the stronger end of the range. Harlequin sets give you six period glasses with variation between them.

Do 18th-century champagne glasses turn up?

Yes, as a small tail of the category. They come on pedestal, baluster, air twist, opaque twist and mixed twist stems, dated around 1730 to 1780. Twist stems alone account for 15 titles. These are sold as singles or pairs, not sets, and they sit at the top of the range in that form.

Is coloured antique champagne glass available?

It is, though only in small numbers. Cranberry, uranium and vaseline, Bristol green, amber and straw opal each surface a handful of times across the whole archive. Coloured and cased pieces tend to sit in the middle and upper part of the range rather than at the bottom.

Why are ice buckets listed under champagne glasses?

The heading takes in champagne service objects as well as the glasses. Buckets, coolers, jugs and decanters all appear. Each of those words shows up in only nine to eleven titles across the archive, but they take up a noticeably larger share of what is on the shelf now.