Through the Glass Brightly

QUESTION: My grandmother had the most amazing collection of Heisey glassware. Though she didn’t know much about it, she loved the way it sparkled. Gran has passed on and now I have her collection. I, too, know very little about Heisey glass. What can you tell me about it? And how would I go about continuing to collect it?

ANSWER: It’s always nice to inherit someone’s collection. But the act of collecting is what brings joy to that person. That same joy is missing when someone hands you their collection. Should you curate it and improve the collection or just warehouse it. If you choose the former, you’ll need to educate yourself about Heisey glass in all its forms. If you choose the latter, you might as well sell it. Holding on to it won’t necessarily do you any good if you don’t know its true value.

A.H. Heisey formed the A.H. Heisey Company in Newark, Ohio, in 1895. The factory provided fine quality glass tableware and decorative glass figurines. It produced both pressed and blown glassware in a wide variety of patterns and colors. The company also made glass automobile headlights and Holophane Glassware lighting fixtures. After Heisey died, his sons ran the company until 1957, when the factory closed.

Augustus Heisey was born in 1842 in Hanover, Germany. In 1843, his father took the family to the United States, settling in Merrittown, Pa. After someone murdered his father, his mother returned to Germany. Augustus spent the rest of his childhood with his sister in Brownsville.Pennsylvania. He worked first in a printing business but soon began working as a clerk with either for the King Glass Company or Cascade Glass Works. By 1861. Augustus H. Heisey was in the glass business.

Heisey fought in the Civil War and returned to the glass business soon afterwards. By 1870 he was a highly regarded salesman for, and son-in-law of George Duncan, who owned the George Duncan Glass Company. By 1895, he was looking at a site in Newark, Ohio, with hopes of founding his own company. The high quality limestone deposits and abundant natural gas, water, oil and coal nearby made Newark an excellent choice.

Heisey understood the importance of marketing. His breakthrough technique for combining blown vessels with fancy pressed stems put his product in the country's dining rooms, but his marketing innovations kept them there. He was one of the first manufacturers to market directly to the end user through advertisements in popular magazines for women. Heisey also understood niche marketing, producing specific products to appeal to various regions.

In the years before World War I, the company prospered, adding lines and colors and developing a reputation for a quality product at an affordable price. The war brought with it problems due to government controls of production and lack of manpower, but Heisey had developed a new etching technique that was more economical and required less skill to execute. The company remained strong until the passage of the Prohibition Amendment which severely curtailed the market for glass items intended for alcoholic use.

Augustus Heisey died suddenly in February 1922, and his son, E. Wilson Heisey, assumed the presidency. E. Wilson's passion was color, and during his time with the company, he worked closely with company chemist Emmett Olsson to produce a variety of hues.

The company went to great lengths to produce distinct colors, and Heisey glass may often be identified from the specific colors alone. In 1925, the company introduced Flamingo, a pastel rose-pink, and Moongleam, a vivid green. Marigold was a brassy gold-yellow color. Sahara, which replaced Marigold, was a satisfying soft lemony yellow and Hawthorne a lavender. Tangerine, a bright orange-red produced from about 1933, was part of a trend to darker, more vivid colors. During this time, the company introduced a Cobalt color called Stiegel Blue. Alexandrite, the rarest of Heisey colors, can be a pale blue-green under normal light, but in sunlight or ultraviolet light, it glows with a pink-lavender hue. Zircon is a very modern grey-blue and was the last new color introduced.



High clarity and brilliance, due to the process of fire polishing, were a hallmark of Heisey glass. Many of the pressed pieces look like cut crystal because of the high quality of the glass and the crispness of the molding. The majority of the pieces are impressed with the company logo, a raised capital letter "H" inscribed in a diamond. Popular pattern names include Crystolite, Greek Key, Empress, Plantation, Ridgeleigh, Stanhope, Old Sandwich, and Yeoman, amongst dozens of others.

In 1942, E. Wilson Heisey died suddenly and his brother, T. Clarence Heisey, took over. Shortages from World War II drastically curtailed production. And after it, labor unrest led to strikes over wages. By the 1950s, overseas manufacturers began producing handmade glass for less, and cheaper machine-made glass for everyday use became widely available.

At the time the factory closed in 1957, the Imperial Glass Company bought the molds for the Heisey glass production and continued producing some pieces mostly with the Imperial Glass mark until they went out of business in 1984. Many of these pieces were animal figurines, mostly in new or original colors using the old molds.

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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.