2016 Great Lakes Carnival Glass Club Convention – “American Iridescent Stretch Glass, the Younger Cousin of Carnival Glass”
by Renée Shetlar
The efforts of the Stretch Glass Society seem to be paying off with all of the various organized displays and presentations made by a good number of SGS members during this 100th year celebration of the introduction of iridescent stretch glass to the American consumer. Dave and I were honored to be invited to the Great Lakes Carnival Glass Club to take part in their 2016 convention with Dave as their convention banquet speaker (I was his most important assistant and time manager).
In fact, this was quite a ‘déjà vu’ occasion since we were there about eight years ago giving a very similar presentation. We have to thank the GLCGC members, and especially Maxine Burkhardt and Wally McDaniel, for the warm reception.
It has long been known that many collectors of iridescent glassware share interest in any glass having an iridescent treatment. We might favor or specialize in one form or another, but most have an example or two of another form—carnival collectors often have examples of stretch glass or brocaded glass and we know of a number of stretch glass collectors who have a number of pieces of carnival for example.
Such cross-over interest was the basis for Dave’s presentation. Dave, always the educator, began with his PowerPoint presentation to review the “basics” about how stretch glass is produced and how that technique differs from the production of carnival glass. To illustrate these production comparisons, he also made use of several of our videos from the SGS archives of SGS souvenir and whimsy production by the Fenton Art Glass Company. He also reviewed the stages of iridescent production by showing the epergne horn examples which were passed around among the audience.
Also included was a discussion of the companies which produced stretch glass, the unique and the common colors that they produced. To illustrate this, he had a display of some of the major producers including Fenton, Diamond, Northwood, Imperial and U.S. Glass. Many of these examples were also passed around the room for the audience to see and feel, up close, the colors and textures. After being quizzed several times, by the end of this segment, all could answer who made Russet!
The final half-hour to 45 minutes of the presentation was a discussion of how to identify the similar-looking pieces – “colonial” candleholders, “cathedral” candy jars, covered bonbons and the ground marie plates. Even though we were well past 90 minutes into the presentation, about 3/4ths of the audience were “hanging in there” eager to learn these secrets. At one point, while taking two of the bonbon lids around for folks to get a close-up look at the lip comparison between the Fenton and the Northwood lids, one woman commented to me that she would never be able to remember that! I told her that was okay and that I’ve heard the same comment from some of our own SGS members! It’s just a matter of repetition.
At the Tom Burns auction the next day, we were fortunate to win several nice pieces including a very unusually colored lamp shade…..we’ll have to bring it to our convention next July for ‘show and tell.’