raising the bar

Meet the dynamic Houstonians selling vintage barware in the Heights

Kids may be headed back to school, but cooler weather remains on vacation. As people trickle back into town, everyone will be wanting to play catch-up — the most likely venue: home! Whether it’s a large, end of summer extravaganza, or just an apéritif, folks are entertaining…and solo cups need not apply.

Setting up a home bar can be a somewhat daunting task, but knowing where to shop is half the battle. No worries if space is an issue, minor real estate at one end of a table will do just fine in a pinch. Once a space for a bar has been appropriated, it’s time to shop.

On a recent afternoon spent browsing booths at Heights Antiques on Yale, I found myself facing an impossibly delightful menagerie of vintage barware on display. Brightly striped shelving housed dozens of ice buckets, glasses, and candy-colored swizzle sticks, while multi-tiered tabletops were covered with pitchers, collectible ashtrays, and even ice cream sundae dishes.

The variety on display is remarkable. This place has something for everyone — from golf enthusiasts to caftan-wearing Golden Girls types, Baker’s Barware has it covered.

Baker’s Barware is owned and operated by husband and husband team Adam and Jay Hitt. They began collecting in 2015 and decided in 2022 to parlay their shared passion for vintage barware into a business. Aside from their popular Instagram account, they do not sell online. Adam and Jay have over 100 sets of glasses in their personal collection, and they constantly rotate items in their Heights location so that everything stays seasonal.

CultureMap caught up with the Baker’s Barware duo to learn more:

CultureMap: How did you two get into vintage barware?
Adam: By accident, honestly. We started with one set of double old fashioned glasses over 10 years ago. They had red polka dots, matched our personal style, and were unlike anything we'd seen before.

Our curiosity piqued and we quickly started buying more sets of glasses until it turned into a passion for collecting really unique and rare sets. We didn't know anything about barware at the time — the history, the designers, the styles, but we've really traveled far down the barware path over the years. It's been a great journey and we've met so many other barware collectors and resellers along the way. It's really a great community.

CM: What type of bar item is your best seller?
Adam: It's a great question! Double old-fashioned glasses are our best sellers, but we offer so many other types of barware. When we started selling, we initially stocked only vintage glasses and a few ice buckets, but we quickly expanded our selection to cocktail shakers, bottle openers, ashtrays, swizzle sticks, pub jugs — there's really something for everyone. We bring our customers a variety of unique pieces to select from.

Some months we sell a ton of bottle openers, while other months ice buckets are the hot ticket item. We recently had a customer buy over 20 ice buckets, while another customer bought half our collection of Americana barware the day after we put it out! While that's not the norm, we understand our customers are often looking for pieces to compliment their existing collection while other customers are looking to start small. Wherever you are on your barware journey, we probably have what you're looking for.

CM: Your instagram is so fun! Do you have a background in marketing or just a great eye?
Adam: Thank You! That really means a lot. My husband and I have no background in marketing. Our careers are in completely different fields.

While we often use our page to promote items we have for sale, the ultimate goal is to take our followers on a journey. Imagine a person walking through a museum and observing and studying masterpieces from famous artists. They can relate to them and experience the art. For us, vintage barware is art, too — with masterpieces and artists of its own. There were so many designers like Georges Briard and Culver that created incredible designs, patterns, and styles. We hope our page is like that museum.

We want to showcase barware for our followers and have them connect and share their impressions, and maybe buy it as well. We strive to incorporate that digital experience into our physical sales space as well. We intentionally use lots of color and lighting to create a fun space to shop. Today's trends of extreme minimalism and muted color palettes are limiting — especially with current barware designs. You'll be hard pressed to find barware with any real personality in big box retailers, which is why vintage shopping is so much more appealing. We hope the vintage barware we bring is a breath of fresh air for people looking for barware that reflects their personality.

CM: What’s your personal aesthetic?
Jay: Our home is a curated cozy blend of the 1960s ‘East meets West' style, combining Hollywood Regency and Chinoiserie with traditional and modern furniture. My husband’s incredible eye for decor makes our space unique and timeless.

CM: What’s the best way to care for vintage barware?
Adam: The most important questions of all! My selfish response is to never use vintage barware so it never gets ruined, but that takes all the fun out of it. Most of our customers have barware as showcase pieces only, but if you're going to use it, absolutely never put it in the dishwasher, ever. Vintage barware is handwash only! Also, never use hot water, especially if the glass has 22-karat gold or embellishments. Hot water destroys gold and can dull the high gloss finish of colorful designs. This also goes for sponges with abrasive surfaces. Glass scratches.

Simple soap and a light touch is all you really need to clean a glass. Remember that vintage barware isn't made anymore, so while it still serves a practical purpose, we should treat it with respect and love so we can pass them on to future barware lovers.

Insulated ice buckets are the must-have accessory for a front porch iced tea catch-up session with friends and neighbors. Sonic Drive-In recently began selling their famous ice by the bag. Coincidence? We think not!

Courtesy of Baker's Barware

Find colorful glasses at Baker's Barware.

barware home-design shopping sustainability the-heights vintage

on the trail

Celebrate spring's arrival at these 2 Houston garden tours

Courtesy of Bayou Bend

The tour includes Bayou Bend's impressive gardens.

The Azalea Trail, one of Houston’s most enduring seasonal traditions, returns this weekend. Once an annual event, the now biennial tour is a do-not-miss affair offering the opportunity for Houstonians to experience some of the best gardens and architecture the city has to offer — all before the Bayou City gets too balmy. Additionally, the newly opened Ismaili Center will offer complimentary tours of their nine acres of gardens in conjunction with the Azalea Trail.

Now in its 88th year, the River Oaks Garden Club’s Azalea Trail has long served as something of Houston’s unofficial kickoff to spring — that moment when azaleas, camellias, dogwoods, and early bulbs begin peaking across the city and residents head outdoors again. The event blends horticulture, history, architecture, and philanthropy into a weekend experience that consistently draws both dedicated gardeners and design-minded visitors from around the city and the region.

“Throughout the 88-year history of the Azalea Trail, select homeowners have generously offered an intimate look at their beautifully-curated private home gardens. In 2026, Azalea Trail goers will be able to tour four private home gardens featuring unique, breathtaking designs,” Emily Bolin and Hilary Purcel, chairs of this year’s River Oaks Garden Club Azalea Trail, tell CultureMap.

“Each location, which also includes Bayou Bend, Rienzi and the River Oaks Garden Club’s Forum, will offer an abundance of inspiration, including enticing planting combinations, creative concepts, emerging trends, and stunning floral displays. We hope to see everyone this weekend as we kick off the spring season in Houston.”

This year’s Trail runs March 6-8 and includes access to seven gardens for $35, spanning four private residential landscapes in the Tanglewood and close-in Memorial areas plus the aforementioned established cultural sites including Bayou Bend, Rienzi and the River Oaks Garden Club’s own Forum of Civics garden.

The private gardens — always a highlight — offer rare behind-the-gates access to curated residential landscapes showcasing planting combinations, emerging design ideas and seasonal floral displays that often influence Houston gardening trends. Meanwhile, the institutional stops provide historical context:

Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens: a 1926 River Oaks estate, now stewarded by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and surrounded by formal gardens and natural woodland landscapes, including azaleas, camellias, redbuds, and seasonal bulb displays planted by Garden Club members. Also, it is their 60th anniversary this year (opened to the public on March 5, 1966).

Rienzi: a former River Oaks residence turned MFAH house museum, where formal European-inspired gardens meet native Texas plantings.

Forum of Civics: the Garden Club’s historic River Oaks area headquarters, listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Importantly, Trail proceeds directly fund local beautification, conservation, and horticultural education efforts, including historic garden preservation and environmental programming across Houston.

Tour the Ismaili Center

Just minutes away, the newly opened Ismaili Center, Houston — already earning international architectural attention — will offer complimentary public tours on March 7 and 8 from 8 am to 4 pm. The Center’s landscape makes it a compelling add-on to an Azalea Trail itinerary.

Designed by Thomas Woltz of Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects — also responsible for recent projects at Rice University, Rothko Chapel, and Memorial Park — the more than nine acres of gardens reinterpret historic Islamic garden traditions through a contemporary Texas lens.

The design incorporates terraced lawns, shaded promenades, water features, and resilient plantings arranged as a symbolic ecological “transect of Texas,” moving from desert species to prairie and Gulf Coast plant communities. The landscape also doubles as environmental infrastructure, engineered to withstand major storm events while creating a calm, civic sanctuary overlooking Buffalo Bayou Park. Visitors that weekend can choose:

Full architectural/property tours
Focused garden introductions
Self-guided QR-enabled exploration

Together, the Azalea Trail and the Ismaili Center present a compelling narrative about Houston’s garden culture — where historic private landscapes and philanthropic garden traditions intersect with a globally-influenced new civic landscape designed for reflection, dialogue and public access.

The Azalea Trail will offer a free shuttle service between Rienzi and Bayou Bend. The locations of the four private homes on the tour will be sent via email with ticket purchase confirmations — street parking is available at all private home locations. The event will take place rain or shine, so keep an umbrella handy this weekend.

Courtesy of Bayou Bend

The tour includes Bayou Bend's impressive gardens.