Take a look around the next time you walk into a furniture store. Chances are you’ll find at least one home bar setup. In fact, it’s even more likely that it will be furnished with some great vintage bar accessories. It’s official: the new kitchen must-have is a home bar. And the best way to set up a home bar is with a few perfect vintage finds. So to help you get started building the perfect home bar, we’ve scoured the Internet to find the coolest and trendiest vintage bar accessories you’ll need to finish the setup. Here’s four vintage bar accessories you didn’t know you needed – until now.
1. Labeled Decanters
Decanters are useful items and serve a legitimate purpose. They help you keep liquor properly stored after you open a bottle (but before you finish it). The problem is that a lot of decanters are boring or look very dated. Enter the labeled decanter, which became popular during the mid century period and featured standard rectangular decanters with various fonts for different types of liquor (gin, whiskey, vodka, etc.) so you always know what you’re drinking. You won’t find a better example of form meeting function.
2. Martini Pitcher
When James Bond mentions that he wants his martini shaken – not stirred – he’s talking about the way the martini is prepared (although there’s some debate about whether one is really better than the other). A martini pitcher was generally sold with a set of martini glasses and was used to prepare a 4-6 martinis at a time for company. Each pitcher comes with a delicate glass straw that’s used to gently stir the gin and vermouth together before pouring it into glasses.
3. Brandy Glasses
Forget the hype about martini glasses, highball glasses, or roly poly glasses (Google it), what you really want on your home bar is a set of vintage brandy glasses. Not only do they look great and take up less space (they’re short and squat), they’re the perfect glasses to break out after dinner for a brandy, a port, or a glass of Madeira.
4. Portable Travel Bar
If you take away nothing else from our quick roundup of vintage bar accessories, take away this: if you’re going somewhere with no bar, you can always take one with you. In the late fifties and early sixties, it was quite common to sell portable travel bars. Designed like small suitcases, they open up to display 2-3 bottles of liquor, 2-4 shot glasses, a shaker, and a few portable drink mixing accessories. Each item is held in place by a small strap, and they come in a pretty wide variety – some even feature swanky velvet lined interiors. They’re not sold today (at least from what we’ve seen), but if you dig around at your local flea market or vintage store, you might get lucky and find one.
Do you have a home bar filled with vintage bar accessories? What are you favorite flea market home bar finds? What accessories can you not live without? Let us know in the comments!
