A gallery of cocktail lore
A sazerac cocktail at Seven Grand.
(Bob Chamberlin / Los Angeles Times)Philiip M. Dobard of MOTAC (Museum of the American Cocktail) and Joe Keeper of Bar Keeper in Silverlake. Dobard persuaded Keeper to collect and curate a collection of whiskey and cocktail artifacts for the new MOTAC Whisk(e)y Gallery at the bar Seven Grand in downtown Los Angeles.
(S. Irene Virbila/Los Angeles Times)A bellhop cocktail shaker and matching glasses from the 1930s. Typically, says Joe Keeper, he’ll find sets with just one glass used -- for the dad’s cocktail when he came home from work.
(S. Irene Virbila / Los Angeles Times)On the right, yellow rocks glasses are shaped like the tail of a rocket or airplane, rounded at the base with small “fins.”
(S. Irene Virbila / Los Angeles Times)
The flattish green glass coupe in the middle is “vaseline glass” made with uranium. They glow under a black light. Farberware made the cocktail glasses with the silver bases. To wash them, you simply lift out the glass insert.
(S. Irene Virbila/Los Angeles Times)The yellow statuette coupes are from the Cambridge Glass Company. When the company dissolved and no longer made these glasses, collectors got together and purchased the molds so that they could continue to manufacture them.
(S. Irene Virbila / Los Angeles Times)S. Irene Virbila is a former restaurant critic and wine columnist for the Los Angeles Times. She left in 2015.