J. & L. Lobmeyr

Josef Lobmeyr founded his Viennese glass house in 1823; it became purveyor to the imperial court, and its Kärntner Straße shop — creaking parquet, vitrines of two centuries of glass — remains family-run in the sixth generation. Lobmeyr's history is a syllabus of Austrian design: the muslin-thin beer and wine services of the nineteenth century, blown so fine they seem to vanish; collaborations with Josef Hoffmann and the Wiener Werkstätte that produced the black-and-white bronzit series; and the crystal chandeliers commissioned for the Vienna Opera and, famously, the Metropolitan Opera's starburst 'Sputniks' of 1966. Everything is still made by hand with Austrian and Bohemian glassblowers and engravers. The drinking sets are the accessible masterpieces — the Alpha service and the muslin glasses above all. Handle one and the point is made: weightlessness as the highest luxury.

Ask to handle a muslin glass — staff expect it, and the near-weightlessness in the hand is the demonstration no vitrine can give.