In former generations, it was common to repurpose worn-out items so that they could continue to be used. This could be a means of controlling household expenses by modifying items originally designed for one purpose so that they could continue to serve another needed purpose.

Today, people are still doing this as a means of saving damaged antiques, a process called upcycling or repurposing, which seeks to reuse/reconstruct items to create a new product of higher value than the original. The success of recycling to create something better and more valuable than the original depends on several factors, including the basic value of the original item, availability/scarcity of the original item, and aesthetics of the new upcycled item. This article explores examples of upcycling/repurposing, some efforts more successful than others.

Example of a Successful Upcycle

As I’ve written about before, I have an extensive collection of Mirror Brown pottery, made in large quantities by various makers in the mid- 20th century, including McCoy and Hull, which are no longer in business. Something I would consider a successful upcycle would be the wall clock I have that was made from a Hull dinner plate. What made it a successful upcycle is that it doesn’t compromise the continued secondary market availability of the many Hull Mirror Brown dinner plates that one can use as originally intended.

The clock is a nice addition to my kitchen area. Is it worth a lot of money? No. Is it worth a bit more, at least to me, than a regular Hull dinner plate? Yes, even if I’m not talking about a big bump beyond the value of the original plate from which it was made. In any case, I didn’t buy it because of its monetary value but because of its practical usefulness, which has served me well for the past 20 years since I bought it.

Upcycled Parts for Lamps

Old glass companies usually had lamps among their products – and, of course, over years of use, those lamps did not always weather the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Missing or damaged parts could sometimes be replaced with other original parts.

More recently, though, we’ve seen lamps offered for sale that are not so much upcycled as “Frankensteined,” i.e., made with old glass items but not necessarily lamp parts. Some companies, such as Fenton, did make multiple use of their glass moulds; for example, a vase mould might also be used to make something else such as the base of a lamp. But there is an aesthetic knack to this, and while an original manufacturer usually had the talent to do it, it’s clear that some later entrepreneurs decidedly did not.

My dad swore by cast iron cookware. He liked using it to cook over his antique cast iron cooking stove (We had a gas range, but he preferred the old stove). He said the cast iron pans heated more evenly and made food taste better – and when I visited my parents as an adult and ate at their table, I had to agree!

Dad was very particular about his cast iron cookware – most of which was, like the stove, antique or near-antique. I remember with fond smiles the way Dad objected to Mom’s insistence on washing the pans with soap and water, which Dad said ruined the patina. My dad took to wiping out the pans with paper towels, oiling them, and then putting them away in the old stove’s oven as soon as possible after he’d used them and before mom could notice. Most of the time, he got away with it.

In addition to his frying pans, Dad also had other cast iron cookware, among which was a very large, handled pot which hung over the fireplace on the other side of the stone chimney into which the old cast iron stove was vented. He cooked in this pot only very rarely since the fireplace didn’t produce the more uniform heating in his cast iron stove, for which the pot was too large.

Manufacturers of Cast Iron Cookware

The most famous name in cast iron pots and pans was Griswold. This company, founded in Erie, PA, dates from 1865. Its pots, skillets, and bakeware are marked on the bottom with the name Griswold in a square cross enclosed in a double-rim circle. The company ceased production in 1957, but the pans can be found on the secondary market in antique shops and online auctions. They are very popular among cooks, and it’s not unusual to see them priced in three figures today.

In the 1910s, the name on the back of the pans was in a subtly italicized form within the cross and circles. In the 1920s and ‘30s, the Griswold mark appeared in block lettering; it is these pans that are most desirable on the secondary market today. This logo was large and extended over almost the entire bottom surface of the cookware. Beginning in the early 1940s until the company ceased production in 1957, the size of the name and its surrounding logo became much smaller.

Along with each of these Griswold logos was inscribed the place of origin, Erie or Erie, PA. The Griswold brand name was acquired in 1957 by the Wagner foundry, which continued making cast iron cookware through the mid 1960s with the Griswold logo but without the Erie, PA, since Wagner was located in Sidney, Ohio. In the early to mid-1960s, the pans were marked with both the Griswold and Wagner logos.

Lodge was another maker of cast iron cookware, founded in 1896 and still in production. Its first factory was destroyed by a fire – a frequent early 20th-century disaster at foundries and potteries that had open fires for production. The Blacklock family, which founded and owned the company, opened a new factory nearby as Lodge Cast Iron, which is still in operation today. The surfaces of its pans are somewhat rougher than Griswold’s, and it is priced much more economically on the secondary market than either of its rivals, Griswold or Le Creuset.

Wall tiles aren’t just an antique decorative accent but a treat for modern collectors. They have a long history: Ancient tiles were being used for paving various surfaces as early as centuries before Christ. But most of the oldest wall tiles seen today date from the 1880s and have become collectible in their own right as well as sought after for home décor. Some older tiles were made of metal, but collector interest today is focused on the ceramic tiles. They were originally used as backing behind stove pipes, as flooring, or as decorative accents in hallways or around doors. These inlaid tiles were described using the adjective “encaustic.” As described on Giovanni’s Tile Design web site, giovannistile.com/blog/the-history-of-decorative-tiles, encaustic tile combines a plain clay base with a stamped area that is filled with colored liquid clay and fired to fuse the different layers together. These encaustic figural art motifs are the tiles of most interest to collectors today.

Antique ceramic tiles were usually about a half inch thick vs. a quarter inch for modern tiles. Still, the thicker width of old tiles did not protect them from damage; it is often difficult to find undamaged tiles today, especially sets of matching older tiles for contemporary home renovation projects. Damage could happen over time while the tiles were in place, or they could be damaged in the process of dismantling and removing them. Tiles taken directly from walls will often have on their backs the cement used to install them, which prevents identification of the maker’s mark and patent and pattern numbers that are usually included on the backs of the original tile. Collectors prefer clean backs that reveal these manufacturing details.

Manufacturers Worldwide and Close to Home

Decorative tiles were a worldwide manufacturing phenomenon. Most of the more famous tile manufacturers were based in the United States, England, Portugal, Morocco, and Japan. Over time, the term “Moroccan” has been used to denote a style rather than a point of origin. But the most famous and original Moroccan tile maker is Zellig, which was actually founded in Morocco and has been functioning for centuries right up until today.

Perhaps the most famous of American decorative tile companies was the J. & J.G. Low Co., founded in Chelsea, MA, in 1877; it closed in 1902. Other American companies founded in the late 1880s included the American Encaustic Tiling Co. in Zanesville, OH (which later morphed into the Shawnee Co.) and Grueby Faience Co. in Revere, MA (closed in 1921). The backs of American Encaustic tiles are marked simply with the company’s initials A.E. (An English company called Alfred Meakin from the 1920s is also marked simply with initials A.M. The use of just the initials may seem to us today a bit of braggadocio by companies so proud of their work they didn’t even have to use the whole name, but it’s more likely that early tile making was restricted to just a few companies, making the use of the initials more readily identifiable at the time).

There’s just something really pleasing about an egg’s shape, whether it comes from hens – or glassmakers! Many companies made functional versions of white glass eggs, beginning in the late 19th century, to be placed as a prop in a nest to entice hens to lay real eggs. They worked quite well for that purpose!

Much later, Fenton made affordable eggs on stand as well as larger, free-standing, blown forms. Fenton eggs on stand were made occasionally as early as the mid 1970s but were issued annually from 1990 until the factory closed in 2011. These were solid and easy to mould. Versions were painted with every decoration Fenton artists could imagine.

The Fenton solid eggs on pedestal weren’t my favorites. I only have a couple of them, but my sister Rosie loved them, and I bought them for her whenever I found one. When she died a couple of years ago, her son, who’d already become an avid Fenton fan under our family’s influence, inherited her Fenton collection.

The larger blown Fenton eggs, on the other hand, were more fragile, both to produce and to collect. They were made as special editions for the Fenton Art Glass Collectors of America (FAGCA), one of two national Fenton glass clubs. I have two of these hand-decorated blown eggs, one in Topaz Opalescent Rib Optic and one in Blue Opalescent Rib Optic. The blue one is atypically unmarked as a FAGCA piece. I was able to confirm its authenticity only when I saw it in the club’s own glass collection, where it was also unmarked as a FAGCA.

Fenton also made a blown egg for QVC in a pattern called Roses on Diamond Optic Burmese (Fenton made this pattern for QVC in many shapes and forms). I acquired one of these eggs at a Fenton Museum de-acquisition auction in 2014 with the hand-painted Museum mark on its base, 69.99.37. In decoding those numbers, 69 meant it was made for QVC, 99 for the year (1999) it was acquired for the Museum, and 37 for the sequence of acquisition.

Artisan Eggs

Although Fenton is probably the best-known 20th century maker of decorative versions of glass eggs, they were also made by Murano and Annalise. Murano eggs on stand retail for $300-$400!

Dave Fetty made blown eggs for Fenton in “Mosaic,” colored swirl (“Crayon”) patterns, and “Hanging Hearts.” After 33 years there, Dave had “retired” from Fenton in 1998, but the company asked him to come back to produce special forms in his inimitable style. His work for Fenton is signed “DLF” above “Fenton” in a convex oval mark stamped into the glass itself, as found on the base of the eggs. Fetty survived a bout with COVID in 2020 with no long-term effects and is still making glass – in a career that started at Blenko Glass when he was just 19. Now in his 80s, he still freelances for Mosser and other glassmakers.

Fetty also worked with glass carvers Kelsey Murphy and Robert Bomkamp (the latter now sadly deceased) on various Fenton glass forms; Fetty would blow out the form and then Kelsey and Bomkamp, who worked with other companies in addition to Fenton, would carve it. I have in my collection a large, freestanding egg by Fetty/Kelsey/Bomkamp, featuring carved chicks on a blue overlay egg. This one was probably a one-of-a-kind as I have found no other records for it. I purchased it at a FAGCA consignment auction held during the club’s national convention in 2016.