Bridges 2012 Short Paper

Depression glass was enormously popular in 1930's-40's U.S. It contains many beautiful examples of centrally symmetric design patterns, reflecting the recent introduction of machine made glassware. Depression glass also demonstrates a phenomenon that occurs in many kinds of design patterns: Nested symmetry groups that emphasize various elements, or relations between elements, within the designs. We show several examples of such glassware, with descriptions of the various types of symmetry groups that apply to these examples.