Juiced: 2022

Remaining available works from this series are available for purchase in my shop.

A staple of American households from the 1940s onward, the orange juice glasses depicted in this watercolor series were sold in so-called “Hostess sets” that typically included a carafe or pitcher and six to eight glasses. Priced cheaply for everyday use, they sold in the millions with the two major midcentury manufacturers, Libbey based in Massachusetts, and Anchor Hocking based in Ohio, duking it out for market share. Atypical for the time and still in production today, Libbey’s whimsical designs were the byproduct of the Jewish female design team of Freda Diamond and Virginia Hamill. Diamond, who stayed at the company until the mid-1980s was recorded in a 1954 Life magazine as having “probably done more to get simple, well-styled furnishings into every room of the average U.S. home than any other designer.”

Today, the majority of these sets are incomplete and sold in antiques malls and thrift shops. The photographs these paintings are based on were found on Ebay and other resale websites, where lots of midcentury enthusiasts buy whatever remains they can find of this period of design.