ON THE UP

Carnival Glass
By Julie Carter

Typically manufactured between 1905 and 1930, carnival glass is pressed or stretched glass given a rainbow iridescence. It was marketed as the poor man’s Tiffany and it was hugely popular for around twenty years.

If it seems ridiculous to you that an item that was once given away as a prize at carnivals can now be worth more than US$30,000, you’re not alone. But one of the most intriguing aspects of the antiques world is that the original market value of an item often bears absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to its worth today. Take, for example, Clarice Cliff pottery. It was designed as everyday crockery and sold in department stores, yet today you can buy a small car for the same price as some of the more sought after designs. And it’s the same with carnival glass.

Not that all carnival glass is on the up. It’s not. But in recent months there have been some fairly spectacular prices for top level pieces, and if the reports from the United States – where the glass is most heavily collected – are anything to go by, the buyers at this end of the scale aren’t even aware of a financial crisis, global or otherwise.

The first indication of a top-level collector on the loose was around eleven months ago, when a Northwood Strawberry pattern dinner plate in soft blue was listed on eBay by a seller from Michigan, USA, who had inherited it from her husband’s grandmother. Bidding began at US$5, but by the end of the first day it had climbed to US$3978. The seller was delighted, and even more so when the sale closed six days later at US$16,235.55 after a total of 67 bids on the plate.

There’s an even better story from Ohio, where an antiques dealer came across a Vaseline carnival glass plate that he snapped up for the asking price of US$30. Although neither a specialist nor dealer in carnival glass, he thought the combination of Vaseline and carnival glass was unusual and he decided to take a punt on it. He’s glad he did.

A little bit of research later, and he’d discovered that the plate was in fact a Northwood Hearts and Flowers and because it was in Vaseline glass, it was almost one of a kind. ‘It’s extremely rare,’ noted auctioneer and carnival glass expert Jim Wroda. ‘It’s the only Northwood plate reported in Vaseline.’ The plate was entered into Wroda’s auction, where bidding began at US$10,000 and ended at US$25,000. Not bad for a US$30 hunch.

Wroda’s auction house also sold an aqua opal Poppy Show plate late last year for US$37,000. It had been bought by the vendor a few weeks before for just US$17. And just before that, a carnival glass tankard by Millersburg sold on eBay for US$17,000 – having been picked up at a garage sale for just US$1. But the story doesn’t end there. ‘The guy who bought that tankard drove to Connecticut to pick it up, and immediately drove back to Ohio with it, where he sold it for US$25,000,’ said Wroda. ‘You hear of this happening every once in a while, but to have these things happen all in a few months is unreal. It just shows you, there are still a lot of things floating around out there.’

The aqua Poppy Show plate. Bought for US$17… sold for US$37,000.

According to Wroda, American collectors still have cash and they’re spending it. ‘They’re putting their money in tangibles,’ he said. ‘We’re seeing a certain segment downsizing, moving or retiring, but they’re not bailing out, not like they’re doing in the stock market.’

Carnival glass was originally developed as the poor man’s answer to the expensive iridescent Tiffany glass. It was hugely popular in middle-class households and was widely sold in department stores until the 1930s, when it gradually fell from favour until it was being given away as prizes at fairs and carnivals.

Although carnival glass was mass-produced, each piece was hand wrought. This means no two pieces are exactly alike, and since there were approximately 2000 patterns produced, with more than 50 documented colours, the range for a potential collector is huge. But how do you crack the high end of the market?

Trial and error. Some collectors buy big and hope to sell bigger; there’s a carnival glass enthusiast in America who ten years ago paid US$95,000 for a rare aqua opalescent colour Grape and Cable pattern punch set by Northwood, and it’s a fair bet he’s been keeping his eye on the market lately. But there’s also another collector who, when he paid US$5000 for an amethyst Peoples vase in the late ‘70s, was considered to be more than slightly loopy; the vase had sold for just US$250 in the 1960s. ‘Everyone in the room wanted to give me a Breathaliser test,’ he said, but after twenty years he sold the same vase to a private collector for US$50,000.

It’s true that these are stories of luck as well as good judgment, and if we were only looking at the lower to middle range of carnival glass we’d see that values have plateaued over the last decade or so. But at the top end of the market, rare and unusual carnival glass is bucking the trend, with interest and prices continuing to climb.

This information first appeared in Issue 33 of Antiques and Collectables for Pleasure & Profit.