History of Pyrex

hey guys welcome to my vintage kitchen and you're probably thinking to yourselves why is he wearing long sleeves in florida well it's autumn and i wanted to give off that autismal effect although i'm secretly sweating to death underneath this thing it's florida miami to be exact and although miami is nice it's not very cool it doesn't actually adhere to any of the seasons but anyway today's topic is pyrex yep now one of the most important things to know about pyrex is that it is not corny wear they are two different things and first to understand them we need to go over the history of both pyrex and corningware accordingly will come in a secondary video um but this one is all about pyrex and we're going to start with um 1887. now it was 1887 the american glass company corning um sorry the american company corning created a glass called nonex for lanterns yeah you see these little things were vital to railways and even steamship operation and believe it or not whenever there would be frigid temperatures and even snow flurries in the north snowflakes would actually hit the glass and it would shatter yeah now this would cause of course you know some injuries to someone who might be using it to look like this can you imagine now also when someone calls you a snowflake from now on um all you have to do is say actually snowflakes have been known to cut a now moving on um it was the wife uh in 1915 uh it was the wife of the owner of the company that said why that said i'm sick and tired of my glass and plates breaking after one single use in the oven now of course back then they didn't have microwaves or toaster ovens to heat up things so they had to actually put their plates into uh ovens to warm them this is either wood or gas by 1915. um so she said of course that being a woman a woman is pretty much behind every great invention of the 20th century um she said why don't you use no necks that you use to create to help prevent thermal shock in lanterns and medical equipment why don't you use that in cookware around the house it'll be a sensation i know i'll use it so that's when pyrex was developed um this is hey guys cut it out i'm on camera sorry my kids you know how they can be this is actually my oldest piece of pyrex and it is um a loaf pan now i call this this is a what i would use as a meat loaf pan or a beyond or impossible meat loaf pan actually i'll give you a close-up later of the mark on it it's actually the oldest piece that i have is from the 1930s pyrex was clear now the benefit of clear is that you can actually see how your food is cooking so chefs and homemakers alike because let's face it they were basically the chefs experimenting with all these things were able to see how things were going in the oven while other things were cooking and that led to a lot of the the recipes that we have today that's how we know how to cook at a certain temperature that's how we know how to cook it differently if it's gas or electric um you can thank that housewife i'll actually get you her name and her picture um who said hey let's try something different um your grandparents or great-grandparents more likely by this point were actually probably bottle-fed in pyrex bottles yes you see i have an example here of a i believe a glycerin bottle or nitroglycerin bottle this is made by pyrex i still have the original stopper these were developed for medical use now the reason why pyrex was so um proficient in the medical field is because when you put um something into a test tube let's say for example and you want to test something in a laboratory setting you don't want the chemicals that make the test tube to interact with the stuff you're putting in it so in order to prevent any sort of mixing or contamination um they started using pyrex now pyrex as i've mentioned is not only a product that does not leach into your ingredients as evident by the fact that they switched solely to pyrex for silicate glass in laboratories around the world but it's also resistant to thermal shock now that and thermal expansion because whether you know it or not your glassware is actually expanding when it's getting warmer and then it's shrinking again as it cools down now if you've ever ever ever taken a dish a glass dish maybe uh let's say an anchor hocking dish right out of the oven and you've put it onto a nice cold granite countertop and it just bursts that's why your countertops are nice and frigid because they're made of stone and well in some cases uh linoleum that little noting doesn't really have that effect but if you have a granite countertop and that's happened to you now you know why the thermal expansion was too quick and it just burst these are things that companies require you to know believe it or not yeah so the next facebook post that i see if someone's complaining about their dish bursting google why it bursts it's 99.9 of the time going to be pilot or chef error because you use the dish incorrectly that is up until this day this very modern day you still have those issues now moving on from the medical field we're going to talk a little bit about the fancy stuff that we all know and love now what's the fancy stuff the painted stuff yes now before as i pointed out pyrex dishes were being made in clear so you could see through well by around 1947 people wanted prettier things they knew what temperatures to cook things they knew that they didn't necessarily have to look at their items but if they wanted to they could still get clear uh casserole dishes they could still get clear loaf pans baking pans all that stuff but america was moving america had been through world war ii and they wanted bright and cheery and colorful and boy did america's manufacturers deliver on that now i use this as an example of the colored pyrex because this is the very first um painted edition of pyrex to exist these bowls are from 1947. they are older than me they are older than you um and they came this is these are what they call nesting bowls their typical mixing bowl shape but they came in different sizes and they came in these wonderful bright vibrant colors as you can see on my digital output there they are still to this day bright and vibrant and i'm going to tell you why a little later why something this old can remain so vibrant actually i'll give you a hint it's because your grandmother or great grandmother didn't put them in the dishwasher so that's our first example of when pyrex decided to go into uh producing painted and colored mixing bowls now they also started branching out after that to start creating colored and painted casserole dishes as well this is my one of my christmas casseroles this one came out later this is about the 1960s it's called golden garland i think or just pyrex garland because it has like a nice garland this one is not microwavable because it has a uh has gold actual gold on the front of it now it has a nice little cradle here that is expandable you just take it right off now the casserole dishes came in multiple sizes as you can see here above me these are my american heritage are my early american um dishes um i think that's the lard the second one there is the largest size they made in this shape this sort of oval shape as you can see [Music] they're opaque on the inside that's right now pyrex does did make entire sets uh of just white and i think they came just slightly before the colored ones and they're the exact same bowl but they didn't have markings on the bottom because i think they were all just sort of experimental and they hadn't figured out the markings they were going to use yet so then they painted them and said okay let's put on a stamp um so all pyrol vintage pyrex that is not clear will be opaque like this but there are exceptions and i will show you those as well but most of what you will come across is this and this is how you're going to know when you're out looking for stuff you'll get to know the shapes of things pyrex was um notorious for using this shape a lot when it came to casserole dishes so you'll get to know the shapes and the feel and the look of things as well but of course they're pretty much always going to be marked unless they're the original opaque ones now something very important to know about um scouting out your um i forgot what i was gonna say anyway i'm moving along the lids that came along with them sometimes had uh this one i think also had a nice pattern on the top this is not the original lid but they're all pretty much like this clear or silicate glass also um uh heat resistant and uh impervious to thermal shock however you can't use it under the broiler i don't know what the mechanics are but the broiler is something different in your oven and that's that's one of the main things that people get confused and concerned about when using pyrex glass because they remember a story of their grandma or mom using it and it exploding there are reasons behind all of those things that are just mainly just pilot error because we forgot or we didn't know now the uh most important thing to remember is that when using vintage pyrex even modern pyrex it'll tell you on the bottom it is microwave and oven safe there are occasions in which it is not intended for the microwave so don't use it in the microwave but it will always be oven safe it is not a stove top safe do not ever put a pyrex dish on the stovetop it will explode and there are exceptions to certain lines that pyrex made they made a flameware line which you can definitely put on the top of the stove in fact they made mostly percolators coffee percolators out of it but it is labeled flameware so you have to make sure everything is yeah you have to make sure you're reading the labels essentially don't just think you know what you're using and put it on the stovetop and do not put it under the broiler not put pyrex under a broiler it's not made for broiler use there are other alternatives for broiler use and we'll go over those later but pyrex is not one of them but they are beautiful as you can see i have a pretty expensive collection this is very limited as to what i actually own i really need to part with some of it um so um let's go over an example of the many varieties of bowls that pyrex created i'm not sure at this point what years things started coming out but i'm going to use for example one of my favorite patterns this is my first pattern that i ever collected because my sister gave me a bowl in this pattern my paternal grandmother had this pattern as well this is called spring blossom green number one because they later reintroduced it again because it was so popular in a different style and i'll show you that a little later this is a set of three mixing bowls and they came in alternating white and green mainly so you know you didn't confuse them if they were separated and think one was a different size and you didn't grab the wrong one and not bothering to you know read the label on the bottom now what's interesting about this is that you think okay this is a standard mixing bowl like how innovative can you get with mixing bowls well i will show you you can add candles these are called the cinderella style i have no idea why they're called cinderella but i'm sure it's out there on the internet somewhere and i may include a link or a description in the bottom now these are not a true set i did this myself this this bowl is the very first pyrex bowl my sister gave me um hi victoria and um so i decided since i didn't really care for these white ones with the green eggplant i was going to switch it up and i was going to collect verde which is a various colors of avocado green and so that's how i mixed mine and i think they go together and i did collect all of these separately these are all from different uh manufacture dates but they're all the exact same um uh pattern except for of course the solid color ones and these actually i love the way this came out i love it so much and these are my workhorses i use them all the time so that was pretty innovative now the handles can also be used as spouts a smaller spout for say maybe cupcakes and then a larger stock for say maybe cake batter we just want to get that out of there isn't that cool i think that's just so genius they also had and still make these big pants now these are pretty much the same mold that they're using today with their modern ones except their modern ones are clear and they're made with a soda lime glass i believe not borosilicate um and as you can see still opaque on the bottom so opaque on the inside but then they put this nice green color on the outside um and this is more people this is the lasagna pan because it's actually it's actual name is the let me find it uh the 933 and then it has the the dimensions um but this came from the verde line um which is all green like i said various shades of green um i'm glad they chose this deep dark like forest green to go with um and so while we're talking about pyrex and it is bowls now these these are probably among my very favorite that pyrex ever produced because they are called uh they're ombre everyone loves a good ombre right these were produced back in the 60s most of your favorite pyrex was created in the 60s and it's this is a complete set that manila's vintage put together and then a friend of mine bought for me my friend christine bought them for me i believe for my birthday and which is in july by the way if you ever want to put it on your calendar um aren't they just gorgeous and they kind of remind me of like halloween candy not exactly candy corn because candy corn is um it has a little yellow and white yellow little sorry little yellow in it that these don't but it just i just i love them so much they scream autumn to me now another set that screams autumn i actually have the name autumn in their name they're called autumn harvest see how orange this one is see how dark that one is and there's like two more in between the size i don't have the complete set yet um but if you look carefully like you see there's a wheat pattern on there to indicate yeah it's harvest like it's harvest time that's what this season is all about it's time to bring in those crops they've been growing all summer and um making them into delicious foods you know like pumpkin pies you know which reminds me i have yet to show you guys the pie plates i'm just going to show this one for now this is a pyrex pie plate it is a vintage um original it's completely white they do have ones with more color on them but i like just these white ones because i have as you can see a collection of white ones from other makers um and this one came in like this pretty like little lace scalloped um and on the inside of the scalp too this can very definitely be used as a quiche pan or a casserole dish as well if you don't require a lid although there are lids that probably fit this but it's nice deep it's nice and deep it's a nice deep pie dish so if you want like an apple pie apple pie for some reason is always putting these little tiny thin tins when you see them in the stores and that's not how you make an apple pie apple pies have big thick chunks in them of apple sometimes pear believe it or not and yeah believe it or not vinx he's my black cat he should probably have a cameo um but um this is a nice thick deep deep one if you ever want to look it up it's the two two three that's what it's called it is a eight and a half inch because you normally find eight inch or nine inch most recipes call for nine inch but if you get an eight inch you can probably stretch your pie crust a little bit it'll thin it out a little bit but you can probably stretch it to achieve nine inches but this isn't eight and a half so you won't have to stretch it as much but just look how deep it is like that's i love that i would make like a nice little personal pizza out of this and then of course go into like shock some sort of like carb shock so i'm just going to put this back in its home and i'm going to bring out two other items that you guys should know about the butter dishes yes i have a nice little silver holder from mine that came with flowers on them pirates made everything i'm not kidding they made everything now they didn't make everything in every pattern so don't think you're going to choose a pattern and then have everything you need in that pattern spring blossom you're pretty safe butterfly gold you're pretty sad you're going to find that's butterfly gold right up there has butterflies on it and flowers but you're going to find pretty much everything in those because those are the most popular but is this the little butter dish i'll show you the one that we have in the fridge actually um and they even made a gravy boat my sister-in-law hi alejandra she found this along with um with her girlfriend uh ashley they found this for me and they they just messaged me hey do you want this and i screamed like she could hear through the text my screen and it was like if you don't get that don't bother coming home like don't because i need that and i've used it maybe i've used it at least three times for holiday occasions um but it does come in it definitely comes in handy and it is look at the shape of it it's not your typical gravy boat shape see it's so neat and you can use it for all sorts of things i i've even used this to um when you make a glaze like a like just that simple like cream cheese glaze or simple uh sugar-based glaze it's great for pouring because of the spout and the size of it it's like you're not going to overfill it so great so now that we've covered pyrex um there are some things that you need to know pyrex um will say pyrex on the bottom unless it's you know one of the white bowls i was telling you about which i don't have here in my house yet it's still in storage but i will update with a nice little video about the pyrex that's not marked but we must must discuss imitation now i say imitation because i don't like the word knockoff because let's face it um some of the greatest things that we have even today were made because of another product being produced that everyone loved and other companies were like let's get on the bandwagon you know so i don't really call things knockoffs because that's that's too much of a negative connotation um i like to call it imitation because imitation is the sincerest form of flattery yeah so we're going to start with my loaf pans here this is almost a modern pyrex it's older probably from the 60s yeah i'd say 60s but it's pretty much the same mold they're using today to make these same clear pyrex loaf pans um this is uh again this is a 213. it's eight and a half um i wonder why everything's switched to nine okay americans got bigger i guess their appetites got bigger um but this is pretty much um what you find today in the stores when you're buying a new loaf pan now they um the biggest um opaque glass collecting collectible items there are in addition to pyrex are a brand called fire king this is a fire king low fan notice the beautiful floral design on it and the opaque glass now you're probably thinking to yourself what's the difference like what's the difference between them well take a look like you can almost see the difference in and the quality um i wouldn't say the quality because they're pretty pretty much the same but i will say that fire king um made some of the most beautiful patterns i've ever seen and they had a huge variety of them um and their loaf pants which is a little bit more feminine so they were definitely going after the housewife market and as you can see it's like scalloped really cute but it will always say fire king along the bottom just like pyrex um well most of the time sometimes it'll they won't have any markings at all and i don't know why that ever happens but um but i just wanted you to be aware of the fact that there are more opal glasses this one seems to have a higher gloss and there isn't really a lot of information on fire king there's even less on glass bake which is another uh company similar to pyrex but definitely not as durable but i'm not sure of like their practices like there's not a lot of information out there on the practices that are verified pyrex actually has entire uh websites and sections of their website on the museum of glass the corner using a glass website dedicated to telling you all about this that's where i got a lot of my information from um but for fire king there really isn't that much um so i'm not sure why it has a higher gloss than the uh than the pirate says but i guess they focus on keeping all the gloss on the painted portions as opposed to the interiors because you know you're only going to see the interiors as you're cutting it open um so fire king's very important and so i'm going to take you over now and introduce you to some of my most important fire king this pattern is called i believe it's called bountiful harvest i think another harvest pattern has fruit on it as opposed to vegetables this is one of my favorite batters because it was my mother's it's my mother's yeah i have the larger dish and this one now i've had to replace the lids um i don't remember my mom's ever having lids but i do remember specifically eating cereal out of this bowl um in front of the television my grandmother's green carpeting that for some reason reminded me of like one of those aerial shots of like a city it was very strange carpeting but i remember watching garfield and friends on saturday morning um and when i um discovered that fire king made the lids to match i had to have them so i've been trying to find these lids and when i find them when i come across them i grab them i don't care if they have a chip a nick if they're mostly in one piece i'm gonna get them because these are mostly for display i don't cook in these just because i want to preserve them and even i make mistakes so i never want to shatter mom's stuff um and it's important to know that um they are fire king they're not pyrex now um where's my pyrex um i don't recall fireworks making an opal um uh casserole dish but if you ever see one fire king made mostly just patterns they didn't do a lot of colors now they did do colors just like pyrex but they didn't do a lot of them because i think i suspect that they didn't um not only can you tell them apart that way but you but i suspect because a lot of the fire king paint and the painted ones that i've seen doesn't hold up as well as it does on pyrex so i don't think they ever came up with like the perfect formula that pyrex achieved to make sure the paints didn't start coming off and that's another thing we're going to talk about but if you ever come across one of these dishes and you're like oh that looks like pyrex and it's all white and it has like a bold pattern and the only thing in color is the pattern it's probably going to be a fire king or glass bacon but i just wanted to show off mom's stuff the woman of tomorrow will program her meals her kitchen computer handles the details moves frozen dishes into the oven without defrosting this will call for special cookware made of space-age ceramic she has a whole set to use for cooking mixing and preparing all kinds of dishes incredibly hard and smooth it quickly washes sparkling white inspires creative touches in the meal she prepares and because this remarkable cookware is actually corningware freeze cook serve wear it goes proudly to the table beautiful corningware worksabers the cookware of tomorrow and yet any of these pieces can be yours today [Music] get started on a corning wear set now get a head start on the future well look i get a better close-up um okay so uh what i want to talk about now is very important topic when using vintage pyrex there's no lead involved in the production of pyrex either now or then um there are some bloggers out there and i won't name names but um she calls herself a mommy blogger no mommy bloggers actually serve a purpose to our society as a greater whole this this person um and a few others of her ilk have made it a mission to give incorrect false information about vintage pyrex and she gets away with it because modern pyrex the company uh isn't going to bother going after someone about products they no longer produce now if she was claiming these things about modern uh produced pyrex they would end this person they would enter anywhere um but they don't really care because they know that if you're a collector you're gonna do the research and you're gonna know that you can continue collecting this stuff and using it with no risk whatsoever to your health and safety so um the following information i'm about to give you is information that i put together myself because i did not want to keep using stuff um ignorantly i wanted to know the facts was there lead involved in the paint um was there lead involved in the manufacturing of the milk glass the okay glass i wanted to know all the facts before i kept using this stuff and poisoning myself so i did all the research and it's very very simple you can do all of this yourself by the way i'm gonna just i'm gonna summarize it and put it in a nutshell in the 1970s when the fda the food and drug administration got involved and said you can no longer produce things for the american household that contain lead because it is poisonous and it is it will kill people and it will kill children um cribs i think uh where the in high chairs were like the number one big uh ticket item that everyone was screaming about um and uh everyone wants to make a cameo today there goes victoria hey cut it up um and uh you may remember that like your mother or your grandparents probably have mentioned it at some point i know my mother did she goes she told me that she couldn't sell certain things in her store because they may have contained lead um and uh it was as simple as you know if you didn't want to get rid of those antique things you just simply stripped it down and repainted it um but you know i completely understand if you want to throw something out and get rid of it all together just to be on the safe side i know i would have um so moving forward the reason why i know pyrex does not contain lead is because in the 1970s in the food and drug administration said that companies could not produce anything that contained lead in their paint anymore or in their material makeup corning did not have to alter their practices from prior to this law taking effect which means they never included lead in the paint or in the material makeup of their items they never had to do any recalls they never had to do any advertisements saying hey by the way this may they never had to do any of that and they didn't have to change the way they produced anything because there was no lead ever um now i'm not saying this makes some saints of any kind but i'm just saying it made them a little bit more uh ahead of the game they weren't putting things in products that was unnecessary lead being used in paint if you look back on the history of it was just a way because believe me lead less paint did exist lead being used in paint wasn't a way i believe to make it thicker um but it was a uh a cheap additive um and i'm not saying that some companies were trying to cut costs by doing this i'm saying that they were using paint from companies that were definitely cutting costs by doing it um so the whole lead situation i understand ex completely why people are um you know concerned about it especially in vintage items you get vintage furniture you need to send it down because lead can leech uh onto anything basically especially if it's a certain age and the finish is is uh has worn off it's gonna start leaching um and so you know if you have vintage furniture you have something that may contain vintage lead don't put it anywhere in your kitchen don't put it anywhere near where you ingest things because uh ingestion is the number one way of getting that stuff into your system now moving on to another toxic note note but before i do i want to wrap all this up by saying vintage pyrex is not is not toxic it's not toxic um so moving a little bit forward um a lot of people want to use vintage pyrex and they are a little bit concerned with things like the casseroles and things like that because um they're so accustomed to things being non-stick non-stick came out around the 70s 80s with the invention of something called teflon teflon is something you want to avoid at all costs i'm not kidding i'm i'm i cannot kid i cannot kid about this teflon is the lead of our generation i'm not kidding um teflon has um is still in production today and it's still being used on certain plot home appliances and home um cookware um if you scratch teflon uh the stuff inside of it can leach into your food and i'm probably gonna get sued for this by the way because i'm saying this but it's not something that they haven't dealt with before because everyone knows that teflon is contains the is the reason why the dupont company was the subject of a class-action lawsuit and mark ruffalo just made a movie about it i'm not kidding look it up um all that stuff is already in our bloodstream it's in our bloodstream like it's in our bloodstream kids are born with it now you don't um you're not gonna escape it it's in you but what you can do is you can prevent yourself from being exposed to it more don't buy teflon now the reason why i bring that up is because i want um myself and i want anyone buying anything from my store that's vintage to know that it's not going to be toxic i'm going to do the research and i'm going to make sure as best i can that i'm not selling you something that's going to potentially cause harm to you or is going to undermine um your non-toxic existence in your own home so you can always rely on me to do that you can always ask questions before you buy something um but i just wanted to cover that base you know non-stick items teflon especially stay away from i tend to go with all natural occurring uh nonstick things if i have to um i use if i have a frying pan i mostly use um cast iron cast iron is definitely not nonstick but the more you build a patina on it it will become less and less sticky so the more you use it you'll have to deal with some stickage you know um for a little while until you build a patina you can you can coat it with butter you can coat your cookware with oils you can coat your cookware with the aerosol sprays and you can eliminate stickage don't cook on high heats don't cook on a high heat because that's going to cause you a lot of headaches coconut lower like a medium heat especially when it comes to ceramic modern and vintage ceramic yes i have both that i cook on and they're actual skillets and frying pans you don't ever need to go about like a medium to cook on those and it will really help with the sticking situation i get it i get it i definitely want um that commercial that has been aired since day one of nonstick cookware to be true i want to put it under the sink i want the the water to run everything completely off of it and then stick it in the in the dryer because it's nonstick that is not true no nonstick no cookware nothing is going to do what that shows you in the commercial it's not it's not real now some things can achieve similar to that but you're never going to get something that's that nonstick and if you do you should be suspicious of it because it's not natural it's witchcraft but like you know corporate witchcraft um so i just wanted to cover those bases um vintage pyrex is not toxic you're not going to hurt yourself in fact you're going to improve not only the performance of your cookware um but you're probably going to improve the taste of your food that's another thing we're going to go over in another video someday i make one hell of a vegan chili i am known for my vegan chili and i've cooked it in metal um in stainless and enamel i've cooked it in ceramic pyro ceramic i've cooked it in um stoneware and i've pretty much come to the conclusion that you know it is the ceramic more like the corningware pyroceramic that makes it taste the absolute best because nothing is mixing with it nothing is getting in there nothing's giving it that metal flavor nothing's giving it that sort of oily kind of flavor that you get when you use stoneware i'm not i'm not sure why that happens but um i've discovered that you know there's a particular um cooking surface that i uh or a vessel that i use to make my special vegan chili that just makes it taste its absolute best so yes you switching to these non-toxic items and switching to any non-toxic item because there are modern items that are non-toxic as well uh copper uh stainless steel um there's another one um ceramic again ceramic has been around forever um thanks to pyrex and corningware and um if you don't want vintage stuff or you want to mix up some modern things with your vintage things by all means get yourself some of these modern things that you know but the materials are 100 and that the chemicals inside of them are used to create them are going to give you um some major medical issues later on anyway i'm babbling and rambling now i want to wrap this all up um if you have any questions whatsoever about anything that i've stated here i can direct you to my bibliography um i can give you the links to take you through the websites where i got the information i can give you the quotes from industry professionals that i've used here um and i do need to get you some um specific reference points so i'll include those as well um and if you have any questions about anything just ask and if you want to know who that certain blogger person was simply google it just google it that person is insane the person goes as far as infiltrating um vintage cookware groups on facebook and uh posing as a different person just to see just to to preach this nonsense but anyway that's enough on that um if you have any questions on anything especially about the history of pyrex or uh the patterns the specific patterns um by all means uh my next video is going to be on corningware which is what you see here um it's uh it's often confused with uh pyrex and people honestly think that it is just as fragile and it is not it is not just fragile it is the most versatile glass cookware i've ever seen in my entire life in fact it's probably the most versatile cookware i've ever experienced in my life so i'm gonna wrap all this up thank you for tuning in and i hope you got a little bit of this video bye

Channel: Brandon Watford

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Id: AzO8MHarV30

Length: 42min 54sec (2574 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 24 2020