Design moment: Pyrex c. 1915

A Pyrex clear glass casserole dish or measuring jug is a kitchen staple. Indeed it has been around so long it is tempting to call any temperature resistant glass dish a “Pyrex”.

The classic American brand was invented by accident when, in 1914, Bessie Littleton, who lived in Corning, New York, remarked to her husband, Jesse, that her earthenware dishes kept cracking in the oven.

He was a physicist at the Corning Glass Works, developing industrial heat resistant glass as battery casings and lampshades for the railroads. As an experiment, he sawed off a battery casing and took it home to Bessie who then baked a cake in it – and no cracks.

The idea for Pyrex was born and Corning launched a collection of glass dishes into the consumer market a year later.

It was initially a pricy product. It had to be hand-finished and so it was aimed at high-income households, with press advertising featuring maids using it. Also, some of its sales points – including that it could be put in the freezer, didn’t have much appeal when so few households could afford a fridge.

But by the 1930s, all that changed. The interest in the new discipline of domestic science inspired advertising campaigns around food, cooking and hygiene, aimed at women in the home. Corning was at the forefront of marketing, establishing a test kitchen to work on recipes and meal ideas. Its history is one of design innovation – with new patterns and colours emerging all the time, to match kitchen styles and passing fashions.

Pyrex fans who come across a vintage dish and want to date it should look at pyrex.cmog.org a vast archive of patterns and colours, with some terrific original advertising. This snowflake casserole dish, opal white glass on the inside, yellow on the outside, with a screenprinted snowflake pattern, is from the 1950s.