The Mystique of Cobalt Blue

QUESTION: I’ve always loved objects made of cobalt blue glass. The shimmer of the deep blue glass as the sunlight filtered through it used to fascinate me as a kid. So it’s no accident that I began to collect various glass objects made of it. But even though I have a modest collection of glasses, pitchers, vases, and the like, I really don’t know much about cobalt glass. Can you please give me some background on it and perhaps tell me what’s really collectible and what isn’t?

ANSWER: Cobalt blue glass offers something for everyone. It’s color is distinctive and the variety of pieces available is great. People often associate cobalt glass with 19th and early 20th-century medicine bottles, as well as ink bottles. But the number of different objects made of it goes well beyond these two mundane things.

The addition of a small amount of cobalt to molten glass turns it a deep blue. Its use goes back thousands of years. It was the Egyptians who first developed a process to color glass using impurities found in raw materials. The Romans copied and perfected this method. In Mycenae, around 1400 B.C.E., the production of cobalt glass reached its peak. The large amount of jewelry and dishes made of cobalt blue glass found at archaeological sites show how popular it was. However, today’s collectors look to more recent times and the glass objects made during the Great Depression.

While not all cobalt glass is Depression Glass, a lot of it is. This is the most fertile area for beginning collectors because so much of it appears on the market. Besides being known as “cobalt blue,” Depression glassmakers also referred to it as Deep Blue, Dark Blue, and Ritz Blue.

Depression glass collectors particularly like to collect the Royal Lace Pattern, made by the Hazel Atlas Glass Company in the 1930s. They continued to produce this elegant pattern until 1941.

Many companies created Depression-Era cobalt glass. In the late 1920s, the Diamond Glassware Company offered cobalt blue pieces in the Victory pattern. Hazel Atlas Glass Company introduced cobalt blue glass pieces in its Aurora line, New Century, Florentine No. 1, Florentine No. 2, Hairpin, Ships and Sailboats, and Starlight. The Fenton Glass Company added cobalt blue glass to its Lincoln Inn pattern. The Moondrops and Radiance patterns by New Martinsville Glass Company provided cobalt blue pieces. Paden City Glass Company's offered cobalt blue glass pieces in their Orchid and the Peacock & Wild Rose patterns. Westmoreland Glass Company showcased cobalt blue glass in the English Hobnail line. Everyone, it seems, got in on the act.

Many companies also made beautiful cobalt blue glassware for more formal dining and entertaining. For example, Morgantown Glass Company created a line of elegant glassware in the Golf Ball pattern. The Cambridge Glass Company, on the other hand, created glassware with overlay designs.

Many companies have produced eye-catching decorative items made of cobalt blue glass. During the 1940s and 1950s, the Fenton Glass Company, of Parkersburg, West Virginia, began including cobalt blue glass pieces in its line of eggs and slippers as well as baskets. Another company that created distinctive looking slippers and other decorator pieces was the Degenhart Glass Company. Animals in every shape and size have remained popular with collectors. The Imperial Glass Co. was only one of many companies producing animals in cobalt blue.

Avon Products Inc. took advantage of the popularity of cobalt blue glass and offered a variety of items, including cruets, cologne bottles, and salt and pepper shakers, to its customers over the years, To reach those looking for more elegant items, Avon had the Fostoria Glass Company, long known for its quality glass, produce glassware in the George and Martha Washington pattern.

Lastly, some people collect cobalt blue glass kitchenware, including mixing bowls, rolling pins, refrigerator boxes, and measuring cups, produced by well-known glass manufacturers.

While some people collect cobalt glass for its value, many collect it for its beauty, especially when displayed in a window so the sunlight can shine through it, giving the room a mystical blue glow.

Step Right Up and Try Your Luck

QUESTION: I just inherited my mother’s collection of carnival glass. I always admired it while growing up, but she never really told me much about it. Now that I have it, I’d like to continue collecting, but I have no idea where to begin. Can you give me some background on carnival glass and also some tips on growing and maintaining my mother’s collection?

ANSWER: Carnival Glass is pressed glass—glass that has been formed by being pressed into a mold while in a hot molten form—that has had an iridescent coating applied. As it cools, it takes on the shape and detail of the mold. Once removed from the mold, and while still somewhat hot, the glassmaker sprays it with metallic salts in liquid form which gives it an "oil-on-water" multicolor appearance. He then refires the piece.

The Fenton Glass of Williamston, West Virginia, first produced carnival glass, which it called "iridescent ware," in 1907. The company called its first line Iridill and labeled it "Venetian Art."  They wanted to mass-produce a product that could compete with the expensive, iridescent art glass made by Tiffany and Steuben. Though half a dozen companies, including Northwood, Imperial, Millersburg, Westmoreland, Dugan, and Cambridge, originally made it, Fenton did so longer than any of the others.

Competition became so fierce between makers that new patterns appeared regularly, so each company ended up making a wide range of patterns of most types adding up to a panoply of choice.

Its eye-catching multicolor shimmer seems to change colors when viewed at different angles. Over the years, carnival glass has been dubbed "Taffeta," "Cinderella," and "Poor Man's Tiffany," as it gave the average housewife the ability to adorn her home with fancy vases and decorative bowls a prices she could afford.
   
But this new type of glass didn’t catch on with the public the way Fenton had hoped, especially since they tried pricing it higher than their regular pieces without the carnival finish. Unfortunately, most consumers didn't see carnival glass as quality glass and refused to pay higher prices for it. Other glass manufacturers soon began making carnival glass using the same iridization techniques. This overloaded the market and soon prices plummeted. To get rid of their excess inventory, carnival glass makers at first began giving it away to carnival owners to use as prizes, but later sold sample pieces to them in hopes that winners could then purchase additional items in the same or a similar pattern. Together all the manufacturers produced over 2,000 different patterns.

This new market for carnival glass was a boon for Fenton, which produced iridescent ware in 150 patterns up until the late 1920s. Carnival glass sold for pennies at five-and-dime stores, and businesses could buy it wholesale at minimal cost. This allowed movie theaters and grocery stores to give it away as premiums. For example, Imperial Glass struck lucrative deals with companies like Woolsworth's and Quaker Oats.

Fenton's earliest patterns included Waterlily and Cattails, Vintage, Butterfly and Berries, Peacock Tail, Ribbon Tie, Wreath of Roses, Thistle, and Diamond and Rib. Among Northwood's first glass patterns were Waterlily and Cattails, Cherry and Cable, and Valentine, but Grape and Cable became their most popular. Millersburg collectors look for Hobstar and Feather, Blackberry Wreath, and Rays and Ribbons.

Collectors call the most popular color of carnival glass “marigold,” although the companies, themselves, didn’t call it that. Marigold has a clear glass base and is the most easily recognizable carnival color. The final surface colors of marigold are mostly a bright orange-gold turning perhaps to copper with small areas showing rainbow or 'oil-slick' highlights. The highlights appear mostly on ridges in the pattern and vary in strength according to the light.

Carnival glass is highly collectible. Prices vary widely, with some pieces worth very little, while other, rare items command thousands of dollars.

However, identifying carnival glass can be a challenge. It involves matching patterns, colors, sheen, edges, and thickness from information contained in old manufacturer's trade catalogs, other known examples, or other reference material. Many manufacturers didn’t include a maker's mark on their product, and some did for only part of the time they produced the glass. Since many manufacturers produced close copies of their rivals' popular patterns, carnival glass identification can be difficult even for an expert.

By 1925, carnival glass started to fall out of favor with Americans, and many U.S. glass companies quit producing it during the Great Depression.

Shining Like a Jewel

QUESTION: My mother had a collection of ruby glass that she left to me. She would always display it around the Christmas holidays. To this day, I still take out select pieces to dress up my holiday table. What can you tell me out this beautiful glass?

ANSWER: Ruby glass is the dark red color of the precious gemstone ruby. This popular Victorian color never went out of style and it’s still cherished today as it was then.

Ruby glass has been around since Roman times. But the secret of making red glass, lost for many centuries, wasn’t rediscovered until the 17th Century in Brandenburg, Bohemia. Johann Kunckel, a chemist from a glass-making family, re-discovered how to make gold ruby glass around 1670.

To make gold ruby glass, include gold chloride, a colloidal gold solution produced by dissolving gold metal in Aqua Regia (nitric acid and hydrochloric acid) in the glass mixture. Tin (stannic chloride) is sometimes added in tiny amounts, making the process both difficult and expensive. The tin has to be present in the two chloride forms because the stannous chloride acts as a reducing agent to bring about the formation of the metallic gold. Depending on the composition of the base glass, the ruby color can develop during cooling, or the glass may have to be reheated to ‘strike’ the color.” Today, glassmakers use selenium to make ruby glass.

Over the years, the number of companies making ruby glass has diminished. Since the EPA has come down hard on these manufacturers, it became too costly to make ruby glass.

Other than its inherent color and possible shape, ruby glass pieces aren’t easily identified. Most Royal Ruby glass wasn’t marked or signed. The glass usually came from the factory with a sticker identifying the ruby color. During the 1940s, ruby glass manufacturers began using stickers which eventually got washed off or pulled off.

Major glass companies such as Sandwich, Cambridge, Mount Vernon, Gadroon, Blenko, Paden City, Hostmaster, Glades, Fenton, and Fostoria all made ruby glass in all the popular Depression glass patterns—Old Cafe, Coronation, Sandwich, Oyster and Pearl, Queen Mary, Manhattan. 

One company, Anchor Hocking, became synonymous with the manufacture of ruby glass. They initially began making and promoting it in 1938. Anchor Hocking's glass, which the company called Royal Ruby, unlike most handmade ruby, used a formula in which the principal colorant was copper. The result, an evenly colored, dark red glass. The amount of Royal Ruby in existence today is tremendous, far more than the amount of red glass from other manufacturers.

Anchor Hocking’s first made Royal Ruby in 1939 in round plates in dinner sets. Since this color became so popular, the company produced pieces of other patterns in this ruby color, including Oysters and Pearls, Old Cafe, Coronation, Bubble, Classic, Manhattan, Queen Mary, and Sandwich. However, difficulty in obtaining copper during World War II, halted production until 1949, after which Anchor Hocking began making an assortment of novelty items— apothecary jars, cigarette boxes, powder boxes, and such—sometimes combining it with crystal.

Footed and unfooted sugar and creamer sets, jam jars with crystal bottoms and ruby lids, plus assorted glasses--ribbed, old café, gold rimmed tumblers, and footed wine goblets—were among the myriad of pieces made in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Ice tea sets with large ice-lipped pitchers and six to eight tumblers were especially popular.

Overall, ruby glass has appreciated in value because, like most glass items, breakage causes scarcity. But many items still sell in the affordable range of $15-65.