Duralex

The Picardie comes in eight sizes, and that is exactly what makes it so practical. The 9 cl is an espresso glass or a glass for children, 16 and 20 cl are the classic water glasses, 22 and 25 cl are for juice and soft drinks, 31 cl for a generous glass of water or a café-style glass of wine, and 36 and 50 cl are long-drink sizes for iced tea, lemonade or a cocktail with plenty of ice. Buy two or three sizes from the same series and the cupboard looks tidy straight away, with everything stacking into itself.

The other series each solve something specific. Versailles and Empilable are designed to stack and save cupboard space, which makes the difference in a canteen or a holiday house. Gigogne has a heavy base and is therefore less likely to tip over, handy with children at the table. Prisme and Manhattan are the more modern shapes, with facets or clean walls, in sizes around 22 to 33 cl. For hot drinks the thin Versailles and Gigogne work best, because tempered glass can handle the change in temperature.

A Picardie is deliberately a glass without a specific purpose. You use that same 25 cl glass for water with dinner, orange juice at breakfast, a small glass of wine, and yogurt with muesli. That's not about being poor; it's the idea behind it: a shape that works for everything and that you can reorder without a second thought when one gets broken.

For tea and coffee, you use the Versailles or Gigogne, and they can safely be filled with boiling water as long as the glass isn't ice-cold from the freezer. For something with lots of ice, choose the 36 or 50 cl Picardie: it's tall enough for a mojito with crushed ice and mint, or for a cuba libre where the cola goes in along the side of the glass. The ridge halfway up the glass provides a good grip, even when the outside is covered in condensation.

Tempered glass behaves differently from ordinary glass. It stands up far better to knocks and to a tap from a fork, but if it does give way it shatters into small blunt granules rather than shards. That is safer, but it also means you should not ignore a chipped rim: damage at the rim releases the tension in the glass and can lead to sudden breakage later. So throw away glasses with a damaged rim.

Beyond that, the care is simple. Everything can go in the dishwasher, even on a normal cycle, and the glasses are thick enough to put up with each other in the basket. Place stackable models apart, because two wet glasses can suck themselves together; if that does happen, hold the bottom one in warm water and fill the top one with cold water. Limescale comes off with a splash of vinegar.

Are you specifically looking for the best-known series? It has its own section under Duralex Picardie, with all sizes shown side by side. If you want to compare all brands by shape, look under water glasses for the smaller sizes and under tumbler glasses for the low, heavy models. Versailles and Gigogne also appear among the tea glasses. And if cabinet space is your main concern, all stackable models from each brand are grouped together under stackable glasses. If you still don't know which size you need, the questions below summarize everything.