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Is This An Antique?
Reflecting
History
New Books for Collectors
—
April 2007
Official
Price Guide to Glassware
by Mark Pickvet
Reviewed by Robert Reed
(Antique & Collectible News Service)
 |
The newly released fourth edition of the Official Guide to Glassware offers a shelf full of information to reader and collector. Massive in content, it provides more than 27,000 updated prices and featuring more than 275 manufacturers. Among the makers are Tiffany, Steuben, Anchor-Hocking, Hazel Atlas, Dugan, Imperial, Northwood, Westmoreland and more.
The market review sections include foreign glass and glass making, pressed glass, cut glass, American art glass, carnival glass, Depression glass, and modern and miscellaneous American glass.
Ready for viewing are more than 250 black and white and line drawings, plus more than 200 maker marks for further identification. Small wonder than this fine volume has made its way to a fourth edition. This latest edition, by the way, contains 50 additional categories within the main chapters, and some 2,000 more values.
Veteran author Mark Pickvet has written numerous books on glassware over the years, and he is considered one of the nation’s leading experts on the subject.
“In general, the bigger the piece of glassware, the higher the price,” the author points out. “This is the old punch-bowl-to-salt-dip rule; if both are made in the same style, the punch bowl will cost more. The same holds true for tumblers — the bigger tumblers sell for more than little tumblers.”
However, Pickvet says there are exceptions because: “Rarity and desirability (also) play a large part in the pricing. For instance, a small Acorn Burrs — patterned carnival glass vase whimsy outsells everything else in the pattern by at least a factor six.”
Those looking for everything from flower vases to diner plates, water pitchers to salt shakers, and paper weights to crystal figurines will find it here.
Official Price Guide to Glassware by Mark Pickvet, 974 pages, index, illustrated, retails for $24.95 from House of Collectibles, New York.
Glass Hen On Nest Covered
Dishes, Identification & Value Guide
by Shirley Smith
Reviewed by Robert Reed
(Antique & Collectible News Service)
 |
When it comes those charming glass hen and nest items, it seems that everybody’s grandmother had one.
That may be the case according to author Shirley Smith. But contrary to popular belief they didn’t all look alike. If you doubt their differences consider the newly released Glass Hen On Nest Covered Dishes from Collector Books.
Extensive study by Smith, and the subsequent findings in this top quality book, shows there were indeed lots of different but delightful glass hens on nests over the decades. The book presents them and identifies them from as far back as the 1870s.
Beginning around 1870, glass covered dishes in animal forms were made in response to Victorian tastes for novelty forms and styles, according to Smith.
“Glass items were made in a wide variety of domestic and wild animal forms, but the hen on nest was the one glass animal form that spread the farthest in many variations,” explains the author. “It was cheap to make, it could be produced in great quantities quickly, and it could be purchased for pennies.”
Included in the book are 250 forms of such novelties. They are considered and depicted in Depression glass, carnival glass, milk glass, pressed glass, and still other glass forms.
Fittingly this highly comprehensive volume explores complete descriptions, dates of production, and further details of identification. It provides more than 800 photographs, plus values for thousands of charming hens on nests manufactured over the years by at least 50 different makers. Moreover, the book offers up European and Asian examples along with the vast variety of American examples.
Glass Hen on Nest Covered Dishes, Identification and Value Guide, by Shirley Smith, hardcover, color illustrated, 240 pages with 2007 values is $29.95 from Collector Books, 1-800-626-5420.
©2000-07 Discovery Publications, Inc.