COCKTAIL SHAKERS  part 2

Gleaming with sophistication and style vintage cocktail shakers, an original American invention and usable work of art, define American Art Deco design.  These elegant cultural artifacts are fast emerging as one of today's most valued collectibles.

Like many vintage buildings saved from destruction by landmarks preservation committees of today, these micro-skyscrapers that once sat upon the blue glass plains of 1930's cocktail tables are being saved for the enjoyment of future generations. Form and function never had a better mix.

Cocktail Shakers; the words conjure up visions of glamour and elegance.  Seven hard shakers over your right shoulder and you can travel back in time, back to the splendor of Hollywood movie sets, with Fred Astaire and Ginger rogers, luxurious hotel lounges with gleaming chrome.  The world of F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby, and watching William Powell instruct a bartender on the proper way to shake a martini in The Thin Man movie of 1933, the thoughts are endless.

Cocktail shakers as an original American art form reflect the changing nature of the various styles of art, design and architecture of the era between the two Great Wars.  We see the graceful lines of Art Nouveau n the early Twenties being replaced by the rage for jagged geometric modern design.  This geometric cubism of Picasso that influenced so many designers of the 1920's was then replaced by the craze for Streamline Design in the 1930's.   

By the early 1930s cocktail shakers were taking the shape of the new deity of American architecture, the Skyscraper; both giving the appearance of movement and speed in a slow economy.  They were here to penetrate the gloom of depression, ready to propel us into the future of prosperity like some Buck Rogers rocket ship.  both perfect symbols of generative power, of our perpetration into better times ahead.

Cocktail shakers and architecture took on the aerodynamically sleek industrial design of the automobile and airship.  It was as, Norman Bel Geddes said, a quest for speed.  All sharp edges and corners were rounded off, even the sharp notes of Jazz music into Swing.

Cocktail shakers have all the classic qualifications of a premium collectible; They're easily found at auctions, antique and secondhand shops, flea markets an yard sales.  They can be had in all price ranges.  They require little stud y to identify one manufacture or period from another, and last they are not easily reproduced.

Ther're all out there waiting , waiting to be found, waiting to be recalled to life.  Recalled to hear the clank of ice cubes and to become again the symbol of elegance.outpermission .  stephen visakay