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. 

Children’s toys have been sought by adult collectors, especially items in their original packaging. For me, keeping dolls and other toys in original cardboard and cellophane is kind of a turnoff, as it subverts the very function of the item it encloses – something to be held and played with. Historically, dolls have had many functions, from child’s play to religious use – emphasis on ‘use.’

The history of dolls

Dolls date from 2000 years before the birth of Christ! Some have thought early dolls, made of various materials such as wood, clay, ivory, rags, and even corn husks, were used exclusively for religious purposes. However, dolls have been found in children’s graves “dressed in the latest fashions,” which seems to indicate that dolls also had roles in teaching and, yes, as playthings. Early cultures that had dolls included Africa, Japan, Russia, Germany, and the Netherlands. The indigenous Hopi of North America had Kachina dolls, usually made of carved wood and decorated in various ceremonial dress, that were used as messengers of gods or ancestors or as ritual items (www.historyofdolls.com).

Much later, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, dolls became styled as “baby dolls” or as young children so that the kids who played with them could be pretend parents. Many of these dolls were remarkably accurate in their rendition of an infant’s head and facial features. Old dolls may contain a manufacturer’s mark on the back or back of the neck. (By the way, boys can play with them, too! A nephew of mine played with dolls among his “boy toys” and grew up to be a loving father of children of his own.)

African-American versions of dolls came out in the 1930s and ‘40s, but they were definitely a minority production, even by the 1980s, when I was an administrator at a rehab hospital and nursing center in North Miami. I bought dolls and other toys with funds donated by benefactors and the facility itself to be given out free of charge to adult staff, many of whom struggled to afford Christmas for their kids. I made it a point to include as many dolls as I could find with black and brown “skin,” and was deeply and genuinely annoyed to find they were so hard to find! But I kept shopping for them. More than one mother who came to my “store” became teary-eyed as she chose a doll with dark skin; more than one told me it was the first doll that actually looked like her own child that she had ever found.

And then there was Barbie (and Ken!)

There has perhaps been no bigger fad among kids or adult collectors than Mattel’s Barbie and, later, her beau, Ken. Barbie was made in a huge variety of sometimes elaborate costumes, depending on the profession she was designed to represent. These dolls came with an endless variety of accessories, from personal care items and costume changes to cars and houses. The first basic Barbie dolls from the 1960s were produced in bathing suits, with additional costumes that could be bought separately. The early Barbies were sometimes accused of fostering unrealistic and harmful body image for girls, and minor changes in the body were introduced in later versions to respond to these concerns.
Barbie was originally envisioned as a white creation. But consumers soon began asking for black and brown Barbies, and Mattel company complied.

Dolls made for adult collectors

Late in the 20th century, elaborately coiffed and dressed dolls began to be produced as collector items for adult buyers. These were mostly mail-order items advertised in magazines and were so carefully made that they would not have lasted more than a day or two in the hands of a playing child, no matter how careful the child was. Consumer taste is slow to evolve, and the feminine-gender appeal of dolls has continued throughout their history.

Most of us are familiar with quilted bed coverings, which have a history going back centuries. We’re also familiar with the prices the best of antique quilts can command today. Quilts can be found in many classic forms and colors in specially tailored alterations of these forms so that no two quilts in the same design ever look the same. Many of the older quilts contain arcane references to family histories or, in the case of Underground Railroad quilts that could be hanged outside, hints on ways for runaway slaves to make their way to freedom. For more information on bed-size quilts, see Sandra Starley’s column, “Covering Quilts,” published regularly here in Discover Vintage America.

My focus in this article is on smaller wall cloth and wooden building hangings that model quilts.

Small Cloth Quilted Wall Hangings

Antique bed-size quilts are sometimes displayed as wall hangings. Small pieces of quilting or embroidery, sometimes framed in embroidery hoops, appear to be a fairly modern take on the ancient art of quilting. At least, I couldn’t find any references to these smaller decorative accents dating before the mid-to-late 20th century. These will often be framed by embroidery hoops that can also be used to create neat squares that can be sewn together for larger quilts. The hoops used for wall hangings are often trimmed with lace or other fabric. Seen here is an unusually large quilted hoop that hangs in my kitchen. This one is double-sewn around the edges of the pieces used to make the picture.

Another example I have of a quilted wall hanging is a square piece (18”) signed Cheri Tamm Raymond, Newport, NH, 1983, making it more than 40 years old. In my experience, though, these small wall hangings are usually not signed.

The oldest small cloth wall hangings, some of them genuine antiques, may result from efforts to preserve sections of larger quilts too damaged to save. Find antique examples of small wall hangings on the Rocky Mountain Quilts website: rockymountainquilts.com.

Barn Quilts

Because wooden evocations of quilting are designed to accent barns and other outbuildings, they are larger than internal wall hangings. They are square, 4-feet-by-4-feet or 8 feet-by-8 feet and brightly colored, which makes them stand out against the uniformly and often sometimes drably painted buildings that they decorate.

This art form dates from about 300 years ago. It’s believed that they originated with immigrants settling in Pennsylvania. Those most commonly seen today have their origin in 2001 from Donna Sue Groves, who made one for her parents’ barn and sparked the modern craze for a reissue of this art.

The oldest of these had the same kind of function as cloth quilts, and they often repeated the artistic motifs of the cloth ones. Sometimes, these contained important messages, such as identifying farm ownership for travelers. They may have served as good luck charms to attract good luck and ward off the bad. It has also been suggested that the barn quilts, much as the cloth quilts that hung on porch rails outside houses, were signals to those fleeing slavery, telling them where to find shelter and food.

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).