Sleek shakers of a bygone era.

Gleaming with sophistication and style, vintage cocktail shakers typify Art Deco design. These elegant devices conjure up visions of glamour, from the splendor of Hollywood movies with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers to gleaming chrome in hotel lounges to F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby to watching actor William Powell instruct a bartender on the proper way to shake a martini in "The Thin Man."

Cocktail shakers reflect the changing nature of various styles of art, design, and architecture of the era between World War I and II. The graceful lines of Art Nouveau in the early 1920s were replaced by the rage for jagged geometric modern design. The cubism of Pablo Picasso that influenced so many designers was replaced by the craze for streamline design, with shakers taking the shape of the new deity of American architecture--the skyscraper.

During the 1930s, shakers adopted the aerodynamically sleek industrial design of the automobile and airship. It was, as designer Norman Bel Geddes said, a quest for speed. All sharp edges and corners were rounded off.

The late 1930s and 1940s saw a proliferation of oddly shaped shakers--airplanes, milk cans, bullets, a variety of animals, and sports equipment like bowling balls, barbells, and golf bags. While drinking and the production of cocktail shakers...