Monday afternoon, October 3, 2011

First, Rande Bly submitted the following pictures that he said represented the color Window Glass Green.

Earlier today Marshall Ketchum said there are four pieces of glass identified with the color on the website of the Club. Lon Knickerbocker of Dansville, New York agrees to this color.

Alan,

I agree with Marshall on some of his thoughts and definitely disagree with Beth Shaut, that this was supposed to be Cyprian.

I have seen dozens of pieces in this color always in combination with Celeste blue. I do not at this time know what to call this color, but it was definitely a production process. The 5154 line has many shapes to it including plates and a footed sherbet or custard, I have seen many pieces from that line in this combination. The 5146 candlestick is also quite available and appears darker because it is thicker than most pieces in this color. The 3165 lemonade comes with the matching pitcher.

I certainly hope one day we have a book that matches colors to formulas so people will quit throwing dung at a wall trying to make it stick, this color has been available forever, and window glass green or not, it wasn’t a mistake or an unsprayed item! Now it is possible that it could be the same combination as Cyprian, much the same way I believe yellow Vere-de-Soie is the same as citron unsprayed, notice though they both have names and this glass will eventually also.

Lon

Then Rande Bly responds to the discussion again at some length.

What a wonderful article by Terry Smith presenting some provocative ideas and questions about Window Glass Green.

First idea is how do we know this is a color produced by Steuben and not an accident of clear glass gone bad? I have seen Steuben pieces that have gone bad. Marshall and I have been discussing the occasional but rare really bad pieces we see.

Perhaps I went a little overboard describing the faintness of this color. I did that because everyone sees color differently and the majority of people would call it faint. I am very sensitive to color change in small varying degrees and I would say this glassware is obviously colored. I can clearly see the delicate green color in the thick parts of course. I see it also from the rims looking in. I catch faint color tone even from the side view looking through the piece where most all would concede and say it has gone clear. I can clearly see its own unique green color even in photograph like I did with the Lemonade from e-bay.

Carder really had good luck making his clear crystal clear. He did good with Orchid and Moonlight.

We have 4 pieces at least in captivity. When you do the search on the Carder Steuben web site be sure to not put “Windowglass Green” but it must be 3 words “Window Glass Green” or the search will not find it. NOW what makes this fun for everybody is we all get to go to our collections and see if we have a piece of this color? It is easy to find. Look for your pieces decorated in Celeste Blue that you thought might have been Clear Crystal. Study it in different lighting. If you say “maybe” you most likely will not have this color. If you have a piece you will find it easy enough. If you find one will you please write in and let us all know.

Three of the 4 pieces are shape numbers 5117, 5146, 5154. This is only a span of 37 shape numbers. This should provide clue as to a time period this glass color was in production and purposeful. We cannot determine date from this alone. We must take into consideration Carder in the latter years of colored Steuben was moving toward making his colors more delicate in nature as popularity was rising in clear crystal. His Smoke Crystal ,Orchid, and Moonlight are great examples of how he demonstrated using faint coloring in the latter years of Carder Steuben. Perhaps an appropriate date range would be 1927-33.

Only one thing about this color is positive and that is we have examples of this “pale green” glassit! Throughout the last 25 years there has been a search for Window Glass Green. Why did we feel we could find it? Well there was some hope because most everybody seems to be in agreement on what color comes out of a pane of green window glass and how it goes clear when you look through it. It is like a tomato. Most will agree on its color. About 2 years ago I saw a piece of Steuben that displayed these properties so we set to work to find a few more examples.

Just like Blue-Gray comes with Amber all most all the time, so far I have only seen Window Glass Green with its Celeste Blue decorations.

Blue- Grey makes another good example. Blue-Gray has a production color name. We just call it Blue -Gray until it’s production name comes to surface. Mean time we refer to it as blue-gray. Why? Because when we look at Carders example of that color the name makes sense. Once we have seen Carder’s beautiful Blue-Gray we all know what color we are talking about. Perhaps the day will come soon when we can call it by its production name?

I finally got a piece of this color of my own. What do I see? I am sorry but this Lemonade is just screaming Window Glass Green. Other collectors knew Window Glass Green was out there somewhere but had confused it with our new Celadon (a darker shade of green). This is why I am asking for everyone to check your collections for this color because I know of only 3 people that have this color and I would like to hear the reports from anyone else that comes up with it to see if it looks like window glass green to them.

We will be continuing to search to see if we can come up with the possible additional production color name that may come to light in the future with additional testing.

Oh and on the rarity chart?

Let me just put it this way. If this color got by all of us for this long….. only 3 owners so far…

If we don’t get people writing in that they have it I will have to put it with or above Orchid.

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2012 Carder Steuben Club annual Symposium will be held at The Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, NY from September 20-22, 2012.

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