Fall is Cranberry Season

QUESTION: Every year at Thanksgiving, I bring out a set of eight sparkling pink glasses that used to be belong to my great-grandmother. They seem so festive and add a holiday note to our dining table. Can you tell me anything about these glasses?

ANSWER: Your glasses are made of cranberry glass, a very special type of glass favored by Victorian hostesses, especially around the holidays. Not only is this glass appropriate for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, but it’s also a popular collectible. In fact, some pieces are worth too much to be used for fear of breakage.

Although glassblowers had been making colored glass since ancient Egypt, it was Johann Kunckel, a 17th-century German chemist from Potsdam, who came up with the red color by adding gold chloride to the clear crystal. During the 19th century, English and American glassblowers experimented with adding less gold choride, resulting in a pink glass which the Americans called “cranberry.”

And thanks to the virtuosity of these glassblowers there seems to be an endless variety of shapes and patterns of this glass on the market. In addition to tumblers and water pitchers, there are salt cellars, sugar shakers, cruets, jars, jugs, decanters, celery vases and finger bowls. Among the widely used patterns are "Swirl," "Coin Dot," and "Daisy & Fern." Some of the most rare and expensive items found from this time period are beautiful lamps and other lighting fixtures.
         
As with any collectible, cranberry glass can also be an investment. Pieces that sold for less than ten dollars a generation ago are now worth hundreds of dollars. Because of the natural fragility of glass, antique cranberry glass has become relatively scarce, though it does turn up in thrift and antique shops,  flea markets, and auctions.         

Although cranberry glass had peaked in popularity by the end of the 19th century, manufacturers produced it in quantity through the 1930s. The last two companies to make this unique glass—The Pilgrim Glass Corporation and Fenton Art Glass —went out of business early this century. Pilgrim Glass Company produced beautiful blown cranberry glass ranging from various vases and baskets to candle holders and sold them in department stores and gift shops around the country until 2001. At the time if the company's closing, cranberry was its most popular type of glass. Fenton Art Glass marketed new cranberry glass, featuring opalescent decoration with coin dots, daisy patterns and numerous other styles, through retailers around the country until it closed in 2011.

Cranberry glass has always been made in craft production rather than in large quantities, due to the high cost of the gold and the delicate mixing process required. Glassmakers dissolve the gold chloride in a solution of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid, known as “aqua regia.” Gold in the batch reacts with intense heat to create the beautiful cranberry color. A glassworker called a “caser” attaches a “bud” of this glass mixture to a blowpipe. Then the glassblower stands on a platform with the mold below his feet and blows the molten glass into the mold to create the desired shape. Afterwards, another glassworker places the piece in a “lehr” or annealing oven where it slowly cools to room temperature. Most cranberry pieces are hand blown or molded and often contain small bubbles and striations.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Article section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the other 24,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about antique clocks in the Fall 2019 Edition, "It's That Time Again," online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques & More Collection on Facebook.

Condiments Anyone?

QUESTION: Can you tell me something about a Victorian rotating castor with 5 or 6 little "doors" decorated with hunting animals. Turn a knob and the doors open to reveal places for condiment bottles which are missing. What metal is this made of, and who would typically have owned it.  The story goes that our great grandfather was in the Civil War and brought it back to Illinois/Minnesota as a souvenir after the war. It’s in excellent condition and is currently owned by my 95-year-old sister who plans to give it to one of her grandchildren one day.

ANSWER: Just about every Victorian dinner table had a castor, filled with jars and bottles of condiments, sitting in its center. The revolving castor set was one of the most widely used pieces of Victorian tableware. It was such an important part of the table setting  that no matter how humble, a family would have one sitting in the middle of their table. But castor sets go back even further.

While castor sets holding just salt and pepper shakers have been around since the 17th century, the American Victorian version, the type most collected today, appeared in the early 19th century. A castor set held condiments. It usually contained shakers for salt and pepper, bottles for vinegar and oil, a mustard pot, and a spice shaker of some sort. Manufacturers usually made these castor sets in white Britannia metal, then silver plated them. During the latter half of the 19th century, they began to use the newly developed quadruple-plate process. Though some fancy castor sets came with cut or etched glass  cruets and spice holders plus figurines—some even had a bell to ring for a servant—most were utilitarian but decorative and graced tables of Victorians in all social classes.

One bottle had a hinged lid with a slot for a spoon. This was for mustard. Other bottles could hold soy sauce, spices or “castor” sugar which was a pounded sugar—not powdered sugar and not granulated sugar—which cooks made by pounding loaf sugar with a mortar and pestle.

Though castor manufacturers produced bottles made of plain or etched glass, people could also purchase ones made of more expensive cut glass designs, available in blue, amber and cranberry after the American Civil War. Manufacturers also offered buyers a choice of handles and cruet styles. And some also had an open or closed revolving frame.

There were several different types of castor sets. The simplest included perhaps only salt and pepper shakers and a container for sugar. Breakfast castors generally included three or four bottles while dinner castors, the most elaborate, consisted of a silver or silverplate frame which held five or six cruets.

In 1860, castors became more elaborate and had bottles of pressed glass. Pressed glass bottle patterns ranged from Bellflower to Daisy & Button, Beaded Dewdrop, Beaded Grape, Medallion Bull's Eye, Fine Cut, Fine Rib, Gothic, Hamilton, Ivy, Honeycomb, Palmette, Powder & Shot, Thumbprint, Roman Rosette and Eugenia.

The rotary castor, in which the bottles fitted into holes on a circular platform which stood on a tall cone-type base, was patented in 1862. Makers often decorated its center handle with elaborate openwork design in one of several styles to go along with furniture of the time. Eastlake castors were some of the most popular. In the 1870's, they added heavy grape and beaded borders. One of the rarer types was the closed castor set in which the bottles sat behind closed doors.

In addition to pressed glass of blue, canary or crystal, makers used Pomona art glass, opalene twist, imported, decorated ruby glass and cut crystal glass. The glass containers had a fancy plated cover and decorated tongs were fastened to the stand.

The castor set became old fashioned in the early 1900s. By World War I, castor sets had fallen into disuse.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Article section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the other 18,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about religious antiques in the special 2019 Winter Edition, "The Old West," online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques & More Collection on Facebook.

‘Tis the Season for Cranberry

QUESTION: Every year at Thanksgiving, I bring out a set of eight sparkling pink glasses that used to be belong to my great-grandmother. They seem so festive and add a holiday note to our dining table. Can you tell me anything about these glasses?

ANSWER: Your glasses are made of cranberry glass, a very special type of glass favored by Victorian hostesses, especially around the holidays. Not only is this glass appropriate for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, but it’s also a popular collectible. In fact, some pieces are worth too much to be used for fear of breakage.

Although glassblowers had been making colored glass since ancient Egypt, it was Johann Kunckel, a 17th-century German chemist from Potsdam, who came up with the red color by adding gold chloride to the clear crystal. During the 19th century, English and American glassblowers experimented with adding less gold choride, resulting in a pink glass which the Americans called “cranberry.”

And thanks to the virtuosity of these glassblowers there seems to be an endless variety of shapes and patterns of this glass on the market. In addition to tumblers and water pitchers, there are salt cellars, sugar shakers, cruets, jars, jugs, decanters, celery vases and finger bowls. Among the widely used patterns are "Swirl," "Coin Dot," and "Daisy & Fern." Some of the most rare and expensive items found from this time period are beautiful lamps and other lighting fixtures.
           
As with any collectible, cranberry glass can also be an investment. Pieces that sold for less than ten dollars a generation ago are now worth hundreds of dollars. Because of the natural fragility of glass, antique cranberry glass has become relatively scarce, though it does turn up in thrift and antique shops,  flea markets, and auctions.           

Although cranberry glass had peaked in popularity by the end of the 19th century, manufacturers produced it in quantity through the 1930s. The last two companies to make this unique glass—The Pilgrim Glass Corporation and Fenton Art Glass —went out of business early this century. Pilgrim Glass Company produced beautiful blown cranberry glass ranging from various vases and baskets to candle holders and sold them in department stores and gift shops around the country until 2001. At the time if the company's closing, cranberry was its most popular type of glass. Fenton Art Glass marketed new cranberry glass, featuring opalescent decoration with coin dots, daisy patterns and numerous other styles, through retailers around the country until it closed in 2011.

Cranberry glass has always been made in craft production rather than in large quantities, due to the high cost of the gold and the delicate mixing process required. Glassmakers dissolve the gold chloride in a solution of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid, known as “aqua regia.” Gold in the batch reacts with intense heat to create the beautiful cranberry color. A glassworker called a “caser” attaches a “bud” of this glass mixture to a blowpipe. Then the glassblower stands on a platform with the mold below his feet and blows the molten glass into the mold to create the desired shape. Afterwards, another glassworker places the piece in a “lehr” or annealing oven where it slowly cools to room temperature. Most cranberry pieces are hand blown or molded and often contain small bubbles and striations.