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Fenton art glass attracting new interest

by | Oct 1, 2021 | Good Eye

October 2021

Good Eye

Fenton art glass attracting new interest

by Peggy Whiteneck 

Dark brown dinnerware

Dark brown dinnerware with a foam drip edge? It may not sound appetizing, but seeing is believing, and, in the 1960s through the 1980s, a few American pottery companies were producing a shiny-glaze, dark brown dinnerware with an ivory foam trim to meet a growing consumer demand. I started collecting this Brown Drip pottery about three decades ago when my mom was still alive. She had an entire collection of it herself, stashed in the cellar of my parents’ home, which she gave to me when she heard I was collecting it. So now I have what I’m quite sure is one of the largest collections of Brown Drip pottery anywhere.

Most of it was made by Hull, which called it House ‘n Garden, which the company also made in other drip colors under the brand name Crestone, including sand, gray, olive green, agate green, turquoise, and tangerine. McCoy Pottery made a Brown Drip indistinguishable from Hull’s, so I tend to mix and match them (A Pfaltzgraff version has a noticeably darker brown that doesn’t blend well with the other two).

Here are two colors of an exaggeratedly whimsical Hull frog planter in foam drip designs, Brown Drip at left and Green Agate at right. Most Hull House ‘n Garden on eBay is very modestly priced (basic tableware under $10), but recent eBay sold prices on this seldom-seen model were $40-$55, with the equally scarce Brown Drip Hippo planter gaining similar prices. While these two frog examples are pristine, many existing copies have chips on the protruding eyes or legs – which, of course, drastically reduces both value and the availability of good examples. (Photo courtesy of the author)

American brown glazed pottery

American brown glazed pottery is marked with the maker and brand. Anything that has a red clay ring base but otherwise looks like Brown Drip is probably Asian (usually unmarked) or Canadian.
The American companies also made brown drip decorative pieces such as planters. Although Hull and McCoy potteries are better known for a variety of multi-colored decorative wares, American-made Brown Drip pottery is still popular with collectors. There’s even a Facebook group for it: www.facebook.com/groups/721067218053951/.

You can find a lot of the Brown Drip, mostly bowls, coffee cups and mugs, and a few of the larger oval-shaped serving dishes. Dinner plates are harder to find in unmarred condition; those that have been used for their intended purpose tend to be scratched by the metal utensils with which they were used at meals. As with most collectible tableware, many homes bought only what they needed to set a basic table. Consequently, much of what one finds in antique stores today are the basic starter pieces such as cups and individual serving bowls. Some of the harder-to-find pieces (e.g., cookie jars, cannisters, and unusually shaped platters and planters) can command high prices.

Hull or McCoy Brown Drip

Most Hull or McCoy Brown Drip is marked as oven safe and also distributes heat well, which is why I use my Hull pie plates when I’m baking pies and some of my casserole dishes when I want to serve directly from oven to table. However, these wares are heavier than most tableware, which can make them more difficult to handle. The Hull covers on everything from sugar bowls to serving pieces have attenuated cover knobs that can make them difficult to hold onto. The Hull teapot also has a shortened spout that makes it difficult to pour cleanly, for which reason I prefer the McCoy teapot.

When the Shawnee Pottery closed, Terrace Ceramics bought the molds from Shawnee’s corn ware lines and made them in a Brown Drip form it called “Maizeware Colonial Brown.” The color is indistinguishable from the Hull and McCoy Brown Drip and matches up very nicely with them (Shawnee originally made these molds in colors it called “Corn King” with bright yellow ear kernels and dark green leaves, “Corn Queen” with light yellow kernels and light green leaves, and white corn ware with two-color green husks. Along with its Colonial Brown color, Terrace Ceramics also made the corn ware in paler versions of the original Shawnee corn colors).

Hull Pottery went out of business in 1986, and McCoy (under various names and ownership) went out in 1991. Terrace Ceramics itself went out of business in 1965, just four years after the Shawnee Pottery closed in 1961. As with American glass companies, the second half of the 20th century was not kind to American potteries as cheap imports became more popular in the retail marketplace.

Peggy Whiteneck is a writer, collector and dealer living in East Randolph, VT. If you would like to suggest a subject that she can address in her column, email her at allwrite@sover.net.

Fenton art glass attracting new interest

by | Sep 1, 2021 | Features, Good Eye

September 2021

Good Eye

Fenton art glass attracting new interest

​

by Peggy Whiteneck 

As a current member and former Board member of the Fenton Art Glass Collectors of America (FAGCA), I was very glad to be able to attend the organization’s annual convention in Williamstown, W. VA, an event which resumed at the end of July after being forced into cancelation during the 2020 COVID shutdown. I’d already noted a heightened interest in Fenton glass during the epidemic, with a proliferation of new Facebook interest and auction groups about it.

One-of-a-kind vase by CC Hardman tiger on blue vase

Highest price paid at the July 2021 FAGCA consignment auction was $900 for this one-of-a-kind vase by CC Hardman, painted with a tiger on a Fenton Azure Blue vase. The detail is stunning, right down to the water dripping from the tiger’s mouth. (Image courtesy of the author)

Now, I was especially interested to find that attendance at the annual convention was more than 100 conventioneers, the largest number in several years. Many of the conventioneers had also attended the convention of the National Fenton Glass Society (NFGS, a spinoff group from FAGCA almost 30 years ago), which had been held in the days just prior to the FAGCA convention.

I was one of the featured speakers at the FAGCA convention, where I used a PowerPoint presentation and live glass examples to talk about Fenton animal and bird models. Fenton animals have become not only a draw for new collectors but also a popular alternative for those longer-time collectors whose massive collections mean they’ve had to resist acquiring larger items. Some of these animal figurines are scarce today, and that drives price. Actually, in tracking prices for items in my own collection during 2020 and 2021, I’ve noted a marked increase in competitive pricing on many of them. As little as five years ago, the average price on the most collectible of Fenton animals was $35-$50. Today on eBay, the price for desirable Fenton figurines is $65 to more than $100. An example has been the accelerating price for a small mosaic owl made by Dave Fetty in 2006, for which I paid $100 on the secondary market. In 2020-21, the range of actual sales has been $254 to $425 (the highest price paid twice, in two different live auctions in 2021).

For vases, bowls, and other shapes produced by the company, sale prices can also include hundreds of dollars. When the Fenton company closed, the family retained some of its moulds and sold the rest to the two national collector groups and to other glass companies. Much of post-2011 Fenton hand decoration is done today on Mosser glass as painted for the still-operating Fenton Gift Shop. These pieces are hand-decorated by former Fenton artists such as JK Spindler and Michelle Kibbe, whose signed names on each Mosser Glass from a Fenton mould can still command very high prices. These artists have also been able to find a few original Fenton blanks for one-of-a-kind painting projects, and I always keep my eyes peeled for those.

Among the most popular former Fenton artists working today is the newly elected President of the FAGCA board, CC Hardman, and Dave Fetty, who still works blowing glass despite advanced age and his recovery last year from a COVID hospitalization. Both artists have produced work in original Fenton glass that commands big bucks today.

In recent years, FAGCA has been the recipient of a large bequest from the estate of Jacob Rosenthal, who had a massive collection that he left to the club along with a generous financial bequest, from which the club is using the interest to finance larger projects. The club is also aware that older collectors are challenged about what to do with their often very large collections given that their closest heirs, children now in their 40s and 50s, don’t seem to be interested in it. It does appear, though, that young grand- and great-grandchildren are showing a marked attraction to this lovely glass. It will take years, of course, for them to grow into the ability to acquire their own collections. In the meantime, since I do not have children of my own, I’ll be bequeathing most of my collection to the Fenton Art Glass Collectors of America.

Peggy Whiteneck is a writer, collector and dealer living in East Randolph, VT. If you would like to suggest a subject that she can address in her column, email her at allwrite@sover.net.