| Comments by Alan and Lorraine Pickup
Cambridge Glass From HOACGA bulletin August, 2003 |
Some years back we stopped in Cambridge, Ohio after visiting the Oglebay Institute's Glass Museum in Wheeling, West Virginia. There were two Cambridge Glass museums located there then, but on the day we stopped only one was open. That was a private museum that displayed over 5000 Cambridge glass items. The small admission charge was well worth the price. The glass on display there was very impressive but we were disappointed in the skimpy amount of carnival glass on exhibit. What we failed to realize at that visit was the Cambridge just didn't make a lot of carnival glass. After some 16 years of collecting carnival and other glass, we find that we only have five Cambridge items in our collection. A couple of Inverted Strawberry powder jars in green and marigold, a small green Buzz Saw cruet, a marigold Inverted Feather parfait, and our favorite, the marigold Inverted Strawberry spittoon signed "Near Cut." So we were pleased to add a green Cambridge number 2660/108 cologne bottle to our meager collection. Ugh! Such a poor name--2660/108--for such a pretty intaglio item. Some collectors consider this a barber bottle. Green is the color most frequently found. Although reported in amethyst we can't find any record of a sale in that color. In 1999 a marigold cologne bottle sold in a Jim Seeck auction in Mason City, Iowa for $2000 and was reported to be one of two known in marigold. We find that about 18 green colognes were sold between 1986 and 2002. A few of these were sold with a clear glass stopper. Considering that carnival glass numbered in the thousands change hands yearly, 18 colognes indicate that even in green, examples of these are relatively scarce. The National Class combine in 1901 built a new modern glass factory in Cambridge after their Rochester Tumbler Co. plant in Rochester, Pennsylvania, burned in 1900. Glass was produced there till somtime in the 1950s under the Cambridge Glass name. Boyd and Mosser Glass Companies are still producing glass today in Cambridge. The Cambridge area is rich in glass history and has several glass museums you can visit. The Oglebay museum displays glass made in the Wheeling, West Virginia area including a nice display of Northwood Glass. |