Laguerta: The Vintage Glasses Museum

Going South of Bacolod City? The Vintage Glass Museum is another cool Museum that you should check out. It’s a small museum that has a large front garden filled with interesting sculptures.    There’s also a waterfall running from the top to the bottom floor.  

The owner of the museum is Tomiko Casiano, a former florist who worked in Beverly Hills, California. He was very happy to show us around his beautiful garden.

Mr Casiano likes to take old scrap and wood to create organic and beautiful works of art. The museum grounds are full of his little sculptures.

After touring the garden, we headed up to the second floor to the museum.

Mr. Casiano collects a certain type of glassware known as “Carnival Glass.” This glass was popular in America during the 1910’s as it was cheap, colorful and looked like the expensive glass brands such as Tiffany glass.

These glassware were also commonly used as funfair or carnival prizes. People would win these cheap, inexpensive but beautiful glasses as prizes for winning traditional funfair games such as the ring toss or throwing a ball to knock over a stack of milk bottles.

The Museum is quite amazing! All the glasses are beautifully organized by color and the effect is very striking.

There all sorts of glasswares to see. Mr Casiano’s background in floral arranging really shows in the way he tastefully arranged the glasses.

Carnival glasses are made using molds in order to quickly make a large number of pieces. Some manufacturers mix in special coloring to make the glass iridescent and have multiple colors like the rainbow.

We were given a short crash course by Mr. Casiano on how to identify genuine Carnival glass. Fake Carnival glass is painted and the paint will easily wash off.  Genuine Carnival glass has distinct and beautiful color patterns when you hold them up to the light.

There’s so much to see and look at inside Laguerta: Home of the Vintage glasses. It’s strictly reservation only so please call ahead. Here are the contact details:

Tomiko Casiano

#5 Lopez Jaena Street, Sum-ag Bacolod City

Telephone numbers: (034) 444-1140 (034) 702-9664
Cel number: 09173098895