Personalized Glass Beer Mugs

Personalized beer mugs can be made almost any occasion. Wedding reminders. Gifts to groomsmen. Fraternity members. College alumni. Gag gifts. While the etching of glass is a centuries old art, the idea of mass, personalized beer mugs has exploded in the last decade mainly though the Internet since people can find them a lot easier than ever before.

Personalized beer mugs trace their ancestry to beer steins made during the bubonic plague. In what is now Germany, lawmakers decreed that mugs needed a lid on them to prevent the spread of disease. That led artisans to make ornate mugs. That tradition exists today, but many beer drinkers don't like the idea of lifting a lid every time they drink. Nor do they like drinking from stoneware. Yet, they like cool designs. That led to the creation of personalized glass beer mugs. However, there are many ways of making personalized glass mugs.

One of the most popular methods of creating personalized beer mugs is through carbide etching, which in layman's terms is sandblasting. This is efficient, relatively cheap and can do multiple lines of type. This may be the best format if you want to do a wedding. This process allows the designer to be very imaginative.

This is the favored kind for people looking for creative designs. Basically, this is done by hand by the artisan using cutting tools, acids and the wheel, which looks like a small turbine. It is very hard to find companies that do this kind of work because it is time consuming and is hard to mass produce.

The newest form of personalized glass making is with laser engraving, said Kurt Gregory, owner of the Nevada-based Glass With A Twist. This allows the designer to create a computerized version of what the customer wants -- initials, palm trees, etc. -- that then tells the laser where to cut. While the styles may not be as broad, this format allows for mass production.

The Internet has allowed the personalized glass market to grow quickly. People now have more options, prices and designs from which to choose. Most glass engravers can turn around an order within a few days, but many prefer longer notice before filling a shipment. The two biggest markets are wedding patrons, who tend to buy numerous glasses at one time for everyone from the best man to the father of the bride to the limo driver. The second biggest market is gag gifts for retirements, birthdays and the like. These are usually one or two mug orders, but build up quickly. Costs run from $10 to $40 depending on the amount of engravings as well as the size of the mug. Most companies, though, offer discounts for bulk purchases.

A sample of Glass With A Twist's humourous mugs.Kurt Gregory of the Nevada-based Glass With a Twists jokes that he should have kept a list of some of the weirder items he has been asked to put on a mug, but he does have some great tales. One person put an entire poem on the side of a glass. Of course, it was so condensed that it was impossible to read. That was the joke, Gregory said. He has also been asked to put obscenity-laced diatribes and funny pictures on the sides of glasses. "You can put just about anything," he said.