Antique Glass Vases
Decorative glass vessels made to hold flowers or stand on display, running from about 1800 to 1960, from small Victorian coloured posy vases to French cameo and moulded opalescent art glass.
What You're Looking At
Glass made purely to hold cut flowers became a standard domestic item in the nineteenth century, alongside specialised forms such as the celery and hyacinth vase. The vase then became the main showpiece for decorative glassmaking through the Art Nouveau and Art Deco years, which is why the early twentieth century outweighs the nineteenth in this archive.
Three groups dominate. Victorian coloured and cut table glass accounts for roughly a third, with celery, posy, specimen, spill, hyacinth and jack-in-the-pulpit vases, and cranberry and vaseline turning up throughout. French cameo and art glass makes up around a sixth and sits at the upper end of the range. Moulded opalescent work is about a tenth, often carrying a model name.
Two smaller branches fill out the rest: Bohemian and Czech Art Deco enamelled and etched vases, many in uranium glass, and Austrian and Bohemian iridescent Art Nouveau pieces. Titles are short and descriptive, naming colour, technique, period and often a factory.
Of 843 listings, 642 carry a clean year, and the 1900s decade alone accounts for 172. Nineteenth-century material splits between precise decades and two vague buckets, 'Victorian' and '19th Century', which together cover 147 listings and shouldn't be read as tight dating. Around 113 come to market on Sellingantiques in a year, listed by 134 different dealers.
What Separates Them
A name in the title does most of the work. Vases carrying Lalique, Gallé, Daum or Loetz sit high in the sampled range, and those that go further and name a model or motif, Ceylan, Formose, Tourterelles, a dragonfly, a landscape, sit higher still than unnamed pieces by the same firms. A plain 'Victorian glass vase' or 'cut glass vase' sits at the bottom.
Technique is the second axis. Multi-layer cameo and moulded opalescent glass occupy the very top of the range; enamelled and etched work carries more than plain coloured or pressed glass. Small Victorian coloured posy, specimen and spill vases sit at the bottom of it.
Then scale and number. 'Large' appears in 83 titles against 'small' in 19, and the samples run to huge, oversized and floor-standing at one end and miniature and bud at the other. Nearly one title in seven describes a pair, and the archive goes further to sets of three, garnitures, an epergne of seven cut vases and collections of eight and thirteen hyacinth vases.
Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for glass vases, calculated from the Sellingantiques database of over a million retail prices indexed since 2003. This retail price guide relies exclusively on Sellingantiques data; no external sources or auction records are used, so the figures do not describe the wider market.
About 113 antique glass vases are listed on Sellingantiques each year, and 134 different dealers have listed one.
Loetz·Gallé
The Antique Glass Vases Glossary
- Cameo glass
- Layers of coloured glass cut or acid-etched back to leave a raised design. The word appears in 105 titles, the most-named surface treatment after colour.
- Opalescent
- Glass with a milky blue-white bloom in the thicker parts. Named in 51 titles, most often on moulded French vases.
- Celery vase
- A tall footed vase for serving celery at table, the odd specialist form of the archive at 57 titles. It has no modern equivalent.
- Vaseline and uranium
- Yellow-green glass containing uranium, which glows under ultraviolet light. Named in 39 titles between the two terms, on Victorian posy vases and Czech Art Deco vases alike.
- Epergne
- A branched centrepiece of several glass trumpets, often on a metal stand. 22 titles.
- Banjo vase
- A flattened round-bodied cameo shape with a long neck, recurring among the Gallé titles. Solifleur, a narrow single-stem vase, turns up on both French cameo and gilt glass.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a celery vase?
A tall footed vase used at table for serving celery, a distinct Victorian form. It shows up in 57 titles, making it the most common named specialist shape in the archive.
It has no modern equivalent, which is why the name reads oddly now.
How old are most of these vases?
The dated field runs from 1800 to 1960, and 642 of the 843 listings carry a clean year. The 1900s decade is the largest single bucket at 172, followed by the 1930s at 143 and the 1920s at 104.
So the early twentieth century outweighs the nineteenth. A scatter of Georgian and Regency pieces appears in the titles, but not in numbers large enough to register.
Which glass sits at the top of the range?
Multi-layer French cameo and moulded opalescent glass occupy the very top. Titles that name a specific model or motif rank above unnamed pieces by the same makers.
Small Victorian coloured posy, specimen and spill vases sit at the bottom of the range.
Are pairs common in this category?
Nearly one title in seven describes a pair rather than a single vase, and 'vases' plural appears in 130 titles.
The samples run further than pairs: sets of three, garnitures, an epergne of seven cut vases, and collections of eight and thirteen hyacinth vases.
What does vaseline glass mean in a title?
Yellow-green glass containing uranium, which glows under ultraviolet light. 'Vaseline' appears in 18 titles and 'uranium' in 21, and sometimes both sit in one title.
It turns up on Victorian posy vases and on Czech Art Deco vases alike.
Do any unusual one-offs appear?
A few things appear only once across the whole sample: a Chinese Peking blue glass bottle vase, a Russian glass vase, a Welsh silver-overlay vase and an oversized railway battery vase.
There's also a Grand Tour bronze athenienne with a glass amphora, and one Gallé vase with a named former owner, the only celebrity provenance in the archive.