Lead-Free, Always

Hold a piece of fine crystal and you can feel why people have loved it for centuries — the weight, the clarity, the bright ring when it's tapped. What most people are never told is where that comes from.

The thing nobody mentions about crystal

Traditional crystal gets its brilliance and heft from one ingredient: lead. By definition, glass can only be called "lead crystal" if it contains at least 24% lead oxide. That's not a trace — it's a quarter of the material, sitting in the glass you drink from.

The problem is that lead doesn't always stay put. It can leach out of the glass and into your drink — and it happens faster with exactly the things barware is made for: wine, whisky, spirits, anything acidic, and anything left to sit. A decanter holding cognac overnight is close to the worst case there is.

And the science isn't ambiguous. Since 2019, the World Health Organization has held that there is no safe level of lead exposure — with children and pregnant women most at risk of all.

Our line in the sand

So we drew a line, and we don't cross it: every Cask & Crystal piece is lead-free.

We didn't want to make you choose between something beautiful and something you'd feel good drinking from. The good news is you don't have to. Modern lead-free glass achieves its clarity and brilliance using safer materials in place of lead oxide — the same approach the best contemporary glassmakers have moved to. You get the drama, the clarity, and the ring of fine crystal. You just leave the lead out of it.

Beauty you don't have to think twice about

A glass should be the most uncomplicated pleasure in your home. Pour what you love, hand it to someone you like, and never once wonder what's coming out of the glass along with the drink.

That's the whole promise behind those two words on every piece we make: lead-free, always. Not a feature. A standard.