IS IT CARNIVAL GLASS OR DEPRESSION GLASS?

by Curculiosglass

Iridescent Candleholders and Three-Legged Comports

            American carnival glass is a form of iridescent pressed glass made between 1907 and the late twenties. The major United States manufacturers of carnival glass were Dugan-Diamond, Fenton, Imperial, Millersbug, Northwood, Westmoreland and, to a lesser extent, U.S. Glass.  There were also a handful of other companies with a very small carnival glass output:  Cambridge, Fostoria, Hazel Atlas, Heisey, Higbee, Jenkins, McKee, and Phoenix.  Most carnival patterns issued by these companies are well-documented in carnival glass literature, and at the encylopedic website of the renown carnival glass authority, David Doty (ddoty.com).

          So, what do you do if you're staring at an iridescent candleholder or candy dish that you can't find anywhere on David Doty's comprehensive website, or in any book about the companies listed above?  And yet, you're sure the glass is old, because you've just hauled it out of a musty box in your grandparents' attic, wrapped in a 1930's tablecloth?

          The two vintage iridescent pieces that most often crop up mislabeled as "carnival glass" on E-Bay and in antique stores are Federal's Madrid candleholders and this ubiquitous three-legged comport made by the Jeanette Glass Company:

Neither of these is carnival glass, but they're both very handsome pieces -- which, I think, is why buyers and sellers are so quick to assign them to the carnival glass category.  Both, however, are Depression Glass.  

            The candleholders were manufactured by Federal Glass Company of Lancaster, Ohio, from 1932 to 1939, and are referenced in Warman's Depression Glass, 4th ed., by Ellen Schroy (page 155).  The candleholders were made to go with Federal's Normandie pattern, which lacked candleholders.  The Madrid pattern, which is found on a variety of pieces from ashtrays to cookie jars, originally was issued in iridescent marigold on a limited number of pieces:  a low bowl and a pair of candleholders comprising a console set.  (The original pattern is also found in amber, blue, clear crystal, green and pink).  Later reproductions of the Madrid candleholders are fairly easy to distinguish.  They were issued in amber, blue, clear crystal and pink only, and reproduced candleholders have vertical grooves in the sides of the central hole:

The candleholder at left is a pink reproduction; the vertical grooves on the interior are clearly visible both from above and from the side.  The bright marigold candleholders in the center lack such grooves; even turned upsideside down with their undersides exposed (at right), these 1930's candleholders show no sign of the vertical grooves found on later reproductions.

          The term "Depression Glass," according to Schroy in Warman's Depression Glass, embraces colored glassware "made from the early 1920's up to the 1970's" (p. 5).  The three-legged comport shown above is thus a candidate for this category as well.  The comport has been a perennial source of confusion and debate.  This confusion arises from the fact that the third edition of The Standard Encyclopedia of Carnival Glass identified the comport as "Imperial #4" (p. 140).  This comport, however, doesn't really look like any carnival glass made by the Imperial Glass Company of Bellaire, Ohio:  the comport has the beautiful simplicity that characterizes the best Depression glass.  Five years later, in Imperial Carnival Glass,  Carl O. Burns corrected the misidentification, writing:

This pattern is not an Imperial product.  It was made by the Jeannette Glass Company, and the original pattern name is Anniversary.  It was produced in both iridized and non-iridized glass from 1947 through the mid-1960's, far too late, in this writer's opnion, to even be classified as old carnival glass!   The most often seen shape is a small, 5" - 6" footed bowl, usually found in a rather pale, washed out-shade of marigold (pp. 38-39).

Warman's Depression Glass lists a ruffled, three-legged open comport as one of the Anniversary pattern items manufactured first by the Jeannette Glass Company from 1947-1949, and later reissued in the 1960's-1970's.  To compound the confusion, however, this comprehensive guide confirms only that an open comport was made in "iridescent"; the ruffled comport is noted as being made soley in clear crystal (p. 38).

           I'd weigh in with Burns, however, because the ruffled iridescent comport so clearly sports the same design as Jeanette's open comport:

I'd disagree with Burns in only one respect:   I don't find Jeanette's iridescent comport to be a "washed-out" piece.  After the occasional gaudiness and overwrought quality of some carnival glass, this simple three-legged comport strikes me as quietly elegant and attractive.  Similarly, the Federal candleholders, despite their lack of contention for the carnival glass category, are eye-catching pieces with beautiful marigold coloring and a high-quality iridescence that looks nearly like a radium finish.

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          Many thanks to E-bayer  tikiman3601  for his bird's eye photograph of the Jeannette comport below, and to fog473 for her pictures of the Madrid candleholders.  Rights to the photos above belong to the photographers, and should not be used without their permission.  Text is(c) 2007 Curculio's Glass, all rights reserved.  To see our other guides on carnival and opalescent glass, click on GUIDE INDEX. 

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