The Mysterious Peach Blow Craze

 

QUESTION: My grandmother collected antique glass. Of all the pieces she had, which I inherited after her passing, one stands out. It’s a small multi-colored vase that fades from a rose pink at the top to a white toward the bottom. It’s devoid of decoration, has a simple shape, and a matter finish. Can you tell me what type of glass this is and a bit about its history?

ANSWER: It seems that you’ve inherited a piece of Mt. Washington “Peach Blow” glass. Of the three distinct types of Peach Blow, pieces produced by Mt. Washington are the rarest.

Peach Blow glass was a craze in the third quarter of the 19th century. The sale of a single 8-inch porcelain vase in 1866 changed the glassmaking industry for the 20th century and beyond. It belonged to Mary Jane Morgan, widow of shipping magnate Charles Morgan. Mary Jane lived a frugal life until her husband’s death in 1878, but she then began a shopping spree that lasted until her death in 1885. The media and the public at the time focused on a single porcelain “Peach Blow” vase that sold for $18,000.

The glass industry was quick to embrace the fad. A new craze developed for anything Peach Blow in color. Unlike most categories in glass collecting, Peach Blow isn’t characterized by color, transparency, the number of layers or decoration. The term was nothing more than a gimmick to sell the glass. Peach Blow glass had no single identifying characteristics, thus its appearance could vary widely. It can be pink, peachy, red, lined or unlined, decorated or undecorated. Plus, it came in just about all ceramic shapes.

So what makes it Peach Blow? The only way to tell is by the original maker’s name. Peach Blow is Peach Blow only if a manufacturer called it that. So collectors must learn who made this type of glass,  and learn to recognize each company’s product.

Public demand for this glassware led to the production of souvenir interpretations for major public events like the 1893 Worlds Fair. The Libbey Glass Company of Toledo, Ohio, successor to New England Glass, set up a working glass factory at the Fair to make Peach Blow souvenirs on site. These pieces shaded from rose pink to white and isn’t lined. Pieces were either matt or glossy and decorated or undecorated and is paper thin.

There were 17 different makers, thus 17 different types of Peach Blow.  They include Mt. Washington, Hobbs, New England, World’s Fair, Webb, Stevens & Williams, Carder/Steuben, Gundersen, Pairpoint, Guernsey, Italian, Pilgrim, Kanawha, Fenton, L.G. Wright, Imperial, and Intaglio. If a piece didn’t originate from one of these lines, it isn’t Peach Blow. And while all of them differed from one another in the colors that fade, the number of layers, and whether they’re lined or not, all can be generally classified into three groups— Wheeling Peach Blow, Mt. Washington Peach Blow, and Webb Peach Blow. 

Made by Hobbs, Brockunier & Company of Wheeling, West Virginia, starting in 1886, it shaded from a rich, mahogany red to a deep golden orange and had a creamy white lining. It came in both matt and glossy finish and its was only decorated with a band of amber found on some pieces. Prices can range from three to four figures. A Hobbs Morgan vase with its amber glass stand can sell for $500 to $2,500. 

Like Wheeling Peach Blow, Mt. Washington Peach Blow was produced from about 1886 until 1888 in both matte and gloss finishes and was originally called "Peach Blow" or "Peach Skin." Unlike Wheeling Peach Blow, Mt. Washington Peach Blow wasn’t lined. Paper thin, it looks as if someone dusted it with rose and blue powders from opposite ends. Due to the very limited production, Mt. Washington Peach Blow is the rarest of the three distinct types of Peach Blow glassware with the average price being around $2,000. But a rare decorated cruet can cost $10,000.

In England, Thomas Webb & Sons produced an English Peach Blow reminiscent of the Hobbs Brockunier production, lined on the inside and shading from a deep red to a lighter yellow. Webb Peach Blow is also referred to as "Peach Bloom" and has more reddish hues than the Hobbs version which is more orange by comparison. This is the only Peach Blow not technically called “Peach Blow” by the manufacturer. It can be found in both satin and glass finishes and can be decorated or undecorated. Most pieces sell for an average of $400 each.

To identify period Peach Blow and the three major variations, pay close attention to the shading of colors from top to bottom and whether the piece is lined or not. Pink satin glass is sometimes mistakenly referred to as Peach Blow as well. 

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about the Sears Catalogue and the items sold in it in "Sears' Book of Bargains" in the 2021 Fall Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Neither Royal nor Legal

QUESTION: I’m interested in buying a court cabinet which has lovely carvings and was bought as an antique, but the owner says it’s made of “pitch pine.” I've Googled this and have discovered it's a North American conifer. I've seen an almost identical cabinet advertised as being from the time of Henry II. It’s made from walnut and has slightly more detailed carvings, although the hardware looks identical. I wondered whether the pitch pine cabinet might be a later copy, perhaps still antique, but maybe a Victorian reproduction. The cabinets started out at the same price, but the pitch pine one has been discounted and is now about two-thirds the cost of the walnut one. Is the walnut one more valuable simply because of the quality of the timber?

ANSWER: Whew, that’s a lot of questions. So let’s take them one at a time. Before we start, it’s important to clarify just what a court cabinet is.

According to its antique definition, a court cabinet, more commonly referred to as a court cupboard, is an English sideboard that was fashionable from 1550 to 1675, that has three open tiers, the middle of which sometimes has a small closed cabinet with oblique sides. The word "court" is the French word for "short" and has nothing to do with the royal household.

People used these cupboards to display pewter and silver items. In Elizabethan and Jacobean households, the court cupboard was one of the three most important pieces of furniture—the others were the tester bed and the great chair. It usually sat on the dias, the highest area of the hall, which was the main room in a Tudor house. As with later sideboards, they also held cups and glasses, spoons (forks weren’t used back then), a sugar box, and containers for vinegar, oil, and mustard.

Besides holding items used in serving and eating meals, the court cupboard served as a display cabinet for the owner’s wealth. Back then there weren’t any banks or stock exchanges, so wealthy persons put their money into pewter, silver, and gold vessels. Not only did these plates and cups make their wealth usable and socially visible, they could be reconverted into coins should the need arise.

The two or three open shelves of the court cupboard were for the display of cups. Owners of these early cupboards often covered the shelves with a “cupboard cloth” to enhance the display of their valuable wares. The court cupboard showed off the prosperity and status of the owner of the house. It’s no wonder that they were such impressive and beautifully decorated pieces of furniture.

There were two forms of court cupboard—one in which the shelves were open, the other with one shelf, usually the upper, enclosed. Decorative arts professionals sometimes call the latter one a “standing livery cupboard,” believing that the owner used the enclosed portion to store and serve food and drink, also formerly known as "livery." The enclosed portion is usually set back a few inches from the front, and may be either straight-fronted or canted, in which case the central door is parallel to the front, and the two sides slant backwards. The early canted cupboards retain the carved supports in their front corners, later ones replace them with a turned drop-finial hanging from the top corners.

Cabinetmakers decorated the cupboard’s front and door with carved motifs and figures, but sometimes to make them extra luxurious, they inlaid them with light-colored holly wood and darker, almost black, bog oak in geometric, architectural or floral designs.

When the Pilgrims came to America in the first half of the 17th century, court cupboard were all the rage back home. After much struggling, they finally were able to sustain a colony on the shores of what’s today Cape Cod. But it wasn’t until a more robust colony came into being on the site of present-day Boston that people turned to local cabinetmakers for their furniture needs. This is where the pitch pine comes in.

Pitch pine can be found along the northeast coast of the United States from Maine to New Jersey, including all of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, and inland across Pennsylvania to southern Ohio, and south through western Maryland, all of West Virginia, western Virginia, eastern Kentucky and Tennessee.

New England cabinetmakers used better woods, such as walnut, for their more expensive pieces. Court cupboards appeared in both types of wood, often with exactly the same carvings. The difference was that they often painted the pine cupboards in red and black to make them look better than they were.

The two court cupboards in question, however, are not as old as you might think. Both are what’s known as Jacobean or Tudor Revival pieces, dating from the last quarter of the 19th century. They’re a prime example of the use of the same carving style and design that cabinetmakers employed in order to produce pieces at different prices. And while they look identical, the walnut one will appreciate in value more than the pine one.

A Tiskit, a Tasket, a Strong Shaker Basket

QUESTION: My great grandmother passed down a rectangular basket that, according to family legend, she purchased up country from a Shaker woman. The basket is in good condition and has been in our family for years. How can I tell it’s a Shaker basket?

ANSWER: Shaker baskets were one of the first American "signature"baskets—from a known maker or  group of basketmakers—to come onto the antique market. A combination of style, materials, weaving technique, rims and handles alert collectors to authentic Shaker baskets. But it takes a trained eye to separate a $10,000 Shaker basket from similar styles of Native American and country baskets valued in the $300–500 range. What isn’t widely known is that the Shakers sometimes bought locally made baskets for utilitarian use which has led to the misidentification of many Shaker baskets.

The Shakers designed each of their baskets for a particular task. For those meant to be used indoors, they labeled them for their use or where they intended to store them. For example, rectangular baskets stored efficiently on shelves without wasted space, so the Shakers created them to use to store folded laundry. They often labeled the basket for the room and shelf on which they placed it. The material used to construct this type of basket would be of the same pounded ash wood but lighter in weight, again pointing to the efficiency of the Shaker design. They places wet laundry, however, in stronger round baskets made with heavier pounded ash to support the extra weight. The style they chose for this basket was fluted rather than cylindrical, making it easier to stack the empty baskets after they finished with the laundry.

Despite the variety of utility baskets, the Shakers were most famous for baskets that they made to be sold. They referred to these baskets, made mostly for aesthetic appeal, as "fancy" baskets, which they sold as souvenirs to wealthy travelers at railroad stops and in the gift shops of grand hotels throughout the United States and England during the late 19th century. The Shakers named these fancy baskets for their style rather than their intended use. For example, when a person turns over a "cat-head" basket, the bottom resembles the shape of a cat's head.

Since the Shakers produced many of their baskets at their more numerous communities  in New York and New England, they used local materials. They preferred pounded splint from black ash trees for the horizontal material because it had stronger fibers and was more pliable to work with, as well as for uprights supports. Shaker craftsmen bent and drawknifed local hardwoods for handles and rims. Weavers wove the baskets with a continuous pattern that required an odd number of uprights. But the Shaker's need for uniformity and precision in design of their fancy baskets made it impossible for them to consider using an odd number. So Shaker fancy baskets have an even number of uprights.

Once a particular type of basket had been properly designed, it would always remain the same. Although styles varied from community to community, there was always uniformity within any one community. To achieve this, the Shakers used identical molds, allowing for basket components to be made by different hands and still fit together precisely. One person never made an entire basket. Instead, they used an assembly line approach.

Fancy basket styles can be found in various conditions for $1,500 to more than $10,000 on the open market, and the working styles are sometimes seen, although rarely, for less than $3,000 if in fair condition. Collectors will pay well over $10,000 for a documented good-condition working basket. So it pays to have a potentially Shaker basket appraised by someone who is an expert in them.

A Victorian Necessity

QUESTION: I have several old cast-iron doorstops that I’ve picked up here and there over the years. I wouldn’t go so far as say that I have a collection, but I have maybe a half dozen. Can you tell me anything about these doorstops?

ANSWER: Your doorstops are most likely from the late 19th century or the early 20th. The British made what they called “door porters,” after door attendants, around 1770, after the invention of the butt-hinged door, which closed automatically. To prevent the door from closing by itself, people began to prop heavy items in front of it, thus the name “doorstop.”

Makers of early doorstops made them not of cast iron but of molded earthenware and fitted with an upright rod, or handle, about 18 inches long, which eliminated the need for bending down to move the stop from place to place. In succeeding years, doorstops might be fashioned from earthenware, wood, marble, or glass—several New England glass companies created glass doorstops shaped like turtles  during the 19th century. All were heavy enough or sufficiently weighted to work well.

However, makers created doorstops mainly from bronze, brass, and iron. Brass ones—usually with a weighted base—often resembled a solid bell sliced in half and fitted with a long handle. Around 1810, handles generally disappeared from doorstops. Newer, knobbier shapes—some with built-in handles that permitted easy grasping came into vogue. Yet the Victorian brass doorstops with rod-like handles can still be found today.

The early 1800s heralded brass doorstops in a broad variety of classical and traditional designs. A bit later—in response to improved techniques in the casting of iron—a long and fanciful parade of cast-iron doorstops began their prolonged march from English iron factories. Some were full figured while others were flat backed and similar to the popular Staffordshire-pottery images of cottages and animals that captivated English hearts during the 1800s. Figures of Punch and Judy, Shakespearean characters, and such historical persons as Benjamin Disraeli and the Duke of Wellington emerged.

Though iron became an building material, cast-iron doorstops didn’t appear until after the Civil War. These doorstops varied greatly in size. A frog-shaped doorstop might measure little more than three inches high while a cat might be as tall as 19 inches. Others ranged from 6 to10 inches high. Those issued from the 1850s until about 1900 were heavier than later ones, as they appeared when brass and iron were less costly and more freely used.

The majority of metal doorstops found nowadays at antiques shows and shops originated during the late 1800s and early 1900s, and their design is often the key to determining their vintage. A figure of a Scottie dog, for instance, points to the 1920s and 1930s, when this breed of dog was popular and appeared on everything from jewelry to playing cards. Similarly, a painted, stylized vase of bright-blooming flowers corresponds to the 1920s–30s Art Deco period.

Thayer & Chandler of Chicago, maker of artists' supplies, and Hubley, a toy-maker, both issued doorstops. In the early 1900s, Thayer & Chandler helped popularize the baskets or vases of flowers that collectors now favor.

During the past 10 years, prices of doorstops have risen markedly. It's not uncommon to find an unusual or rare figural—two kittens in colorful painted attire or an American Indian—selling for hundreds of dollars. However, an aware buyer can find antique doorstops for under $100—some for even as little as $50. Most sell in the $75-90 range. Rare ones can go for as high as $300. It’s important to look for old doorstops that still have a amount of their original paint since repainting decreases the value of an old piece.

Many collectors acquire doorstops to those with a specific motif, such as those with a nautical flavor—lighthouses, clipper ships, mariners---or others with a Western theme---Indians, cowboys, stagecoaches. There are also collectors who seek monkeys, ducks, clowns, gnomes, and so on.

Blowin' in the Wind

QUESTION: We just purchased an old farm house and barn. The barn has an old weather vane mounted on top of a cupola on the roof. My husband and I aren’t sure if we should restore it or leave it as is. What can you tell me about weather vanes in general and whether we should have it restored?

ANSWER: It doesn’t really matter how old your weather vane is, as long as it’s not new. Old weather vanes atop old barns are an American tradition and today are worth some bucks, even if they’re weathered.

Weather vanes have been blowing into the wind for as long as farmers and sailors needed to know the direction of the breeze, but they have traditionally performed another function as well. Silhouetted against the sky for all to see, a weather vane was often an emblem that declared to the world the profession of the person who mounted it: a quill for a lawyer, a dory for a fisherman, a prize Holstein for a dairy farmer.

The earliest known weather vane, dating to 48 B.C., was an image of Triton—a Greek god with the head and torso of a man and the tail of a fish—mounted on The Tower of the Winds in Athens.

Weather vanes didn’t gain popularity until nobles in medieval England flew banners from their castle walls emblazoned with their coats of arms. After the Normans conquered England, these "fanes,” as the banners came to be known, were made of iron with designs cut into them. Since what wouldn't bend might break, makers soon rigged them to turn with the breeze. By the English Renaissance, the fane had become a vane, a simpler and more functional device affixed atop a merchant's shop as often as on a knight's battlement.

The colonists who settled America brought their traditions with them, including the weather vane. While it's likely that the first colonial vanes were crudely cut from wood, by the late 1600s several Puritan meeting houses were topped by iron vanes. Boston's Old State House, erected in 1713, sported a swallow-tailed banner with an arrow, and by 1740, America's first craftsman of weather vanes, Shem Drowne, had begun fashioning copper vanes for Boston's public buildings.

Prior to the 1850s, blacksmiths created most vanes. And though they devoted considerable skill and imagination to them, forging iron vanes or beating them out of copper was largely a sideline, something a blacksmith did on request.

Blacksmiths in coastal New England towns, where watching the wind has always been vital, made vanes in the shape of ships for sea captains, cod and flounder vanes for fishermen, and leviathans for the whale hunters on Nantucket and at New Bedford. In-land, farmers sawed crude wooden vanes in the shapes of plows and farm animals, or found a blacksmith who could fashion more sophisticated vanes for their barns.

After the 1850s, metalworkers like Alvin Jewell, of Waltham, Massachusetts, began manufacturing copper vanes using templates and molds, a process that was faster than the ancient repousse method, in which they pounded copper into the desired shape. Speedier manufacturing processes meant lower costs, and Jewell found that his patterns sold quite well through mail-order catalogs.

L.W. Cushing, perhaps the best-known weather vane manufacturer of the 19th century. He added them to a collection of over 100 silhouette and full-bodied vanes in his catalog. Other weather vane companies soon opened for business, including J.W. Fiske and E.G. Washburneboth of New York City, and Harris &Co. of Boston.

It was during the height of the Victorian Era when weather vanes were one of the most sought after items. They began appearing on everything from stables to gazebos. Prices ranged from $15 to $400 for the  vane, its brass turning rod, a copper ball, and a set of brass cardinals indicating the points of the compass.

The boom in weather vanes didn't last long, only 50 years or so, but during that period hundreds of designs were sold throughout America: banners, locomotives, fire engines, Statues of Liberty, clipper ships, river steamers, cannons, even sea monsters and dragons. Still, the traditional designs—roosters, horses, and other animals—remained the most popular.

By the early 20th century, changing tastes and simpler home design—particularly the decline of the cupola—caused a decline in vane popularity.
               
People began to be collect weather vanes as folk art about 40 years ago. Many sought vanes made by factories that originally sold them through catelogues, so handmade vanes weren’t even an issue. The highest amount ever paid for a weather vane was for a factory-made, copper Indian chief vane from 1900 that sold for $5.8 million at Sotheby’s in October 2006. Others have sold for prices from four figures on up.

Scarce and unusual weathervane forms, such as mermaids, cars, trains, and firemen, are very popular with collectors. The most common ones, however, are horses, roosters, and cows which tend to fetch lower prices.

The majority of collectors like old copper vanes that have a green or verdigris patina which helps to date it.  But the biggest problem are the vanes made now from original molds from defunct factories.
Though manufacturers generally don’t conceal the replicas’ origins, subsequent sellers often do.

The weathervanes that command the highest prices have not been restored. They have a patina—often noticeably different on one side thanks in part to prevailing winds and decades of exposure to sun, sleet, rain, snow and birds.