How to Identify and Value Antique Colored Carnival Glass

hi this is Jennifer with City Farmhouse Antiques and I am here to show you a little bit about how to identify antique colored glass specifically Carnival Glass so when you're looking at antique glass you want to look at how it's made you want to look at the color the pattern and of course for any damage so antique Carnival Glass back in the early 1900s was really made to copy Louis Comfort Tiffany's beautiful Tiffany fabrel Glass and his glass was very expensive it still is today and most people couldn't afford it so they started mass producing Carnival Glass and it was used [Music] um as giveaways as souvenirs as advertising at carnivals and people collected it it was beautiful it was much cheaper to to buy and so colorful and so when you're looking at a piece to identify the value and to find out what it is first you want to look at how it was made so this Carnival Glass was molded and these antique molds were many times made out of wood and you can see the mold marks when you're looking at identifying a piece so this piece back here is actually a beautiful console bowl or what we would call a compote Bowl because it's very large it's probably 10 12 inches wide it's footed and when you're looking at how a piece is made if there are mold marks which there are on this piece this is where they would have taken the very hot glass they would have put it down into a pre-made mold a wooden mold and they would have pushed it into all of the areas so as they pushed it in to to make the pattern it will leave these mold marks that were in the corners and you may find some with three some may have four some may have two you're going to have the mold marks this happens to be a footed piece there you can see the feet it is in the grape pattern and to find and identify a true the color of the piece because you can see the beautiful colors the electric blue the Beautiful fuchsias the gold the true color is going to be at the very bottom you always want to look at the very bottom so this is going to be an amethyst purple piece and it's important to note here you see those Fine Lines there those are what you call straw marks a lot of people might consider that to be damage but that's not damaged that's actually a crease in the glass that was made when it was Cooling in the mold so that's going to be typical of a piece of Carnival Glass and it's not considered damaged so there you can see a mold Mark so we know that this piece was made in a mold versus like a hand blown piece of glass so how do you identify a hand blown piece of glass here is a antique this would be a Rose Bowl you can see it's got a crimped top and if you look at the bottom you're going to tell a hand blown piece because of the very bottom that inner circle is where the piece of molten glass was actually cut off of the punt or the stick when it was formed so some of them are going to be polished this one's polished you see how smooth that is and some of them are going to be rough that many times is an indicator too of the value of glass if it's been polished many times it's considered or could be from a more valuable maker but again that's not always the case so that's the difference in identifying a piece made from a mold versus a piece of hand blown glass your Carnival Glass again is going to have these beautiful iridescent colors you're going to see the mold marks you may or may not see Maker's Marks you also want to assess for damage you can see the damage that's inside this piece that's why I just don't recommend ever putting anything in a piece because you can see that they can scratch um and become damaged here you're going to see we call them Maker's Marks trademarks what that is is a logo there in the bottom you see the end with a circle around it that stands for Northwood so many pieces are not going to have a Maker's Mark that's okay it's still Carnival Glass um we just have to identify them then based on the pattern which gets tricky because as these glass houses closed in the early 19th century and on some of the other glass houses would purchase their molds so they would purchase some of the same molds and patterns so it's not uncommon to find the same mold by different glass companies depending upon the year and the time that they were made so again I've shown you how to identify the color whether it is pressed into a mold or whether it was hand blown and then the type of piece is important too so this is a little footed piece again this is the grape and again this one is not marked does have damage somebody put something in it unfortunately there you can see it's an amethyst or purple piece you can see the mold lines there here's another piece in the marigold this is what they called the marigold and there's really over 60 different recognized colors and there's opalescent you know which is a different shade this happens to be Marigold it's not opalescent but this is in the fruit you can see that there is a fruit pattern here and this dish would be what we would consider like a little nappy dish or a little bon bon dish for nuts for candies for that kind of thing and here you can see the mold marks on the side and on the bottom there's a bubble on this piece again that looks like damage but that was a bubble inside the glass the damage is going to be if you can feel it and it's outside and it's a chip and of course you can't feel this this is inside the glass here's another beautiful piece this is of the mirror of the peacock that beautiful and the iridescence again it's going to be amethyst or purple on the bottom this one does have a Maker's Mark there you can see that this is also Northwood see the end there there you can see it this piece over here is another cute piece this is a little bon bon dish you see how it's kind of has a low profile it's a double handled bon bon dish and the true color is going to be green and it doesn't have a maker's mark but again very beautiful piece of glass these are beautiful in a case they're beautiful to sit out here's a real pretty green and another little floral pattern and again if you see something you like just message Us in the chat box we will have these pieces up on the website I don't have them up there yet um but that doesn't mean that you can't purchase them and we can't ship them to you this is another little bon bon dish in the question mark double handled there's another real pretty piece I will show you this one was actually in my family this is a compote Bowl so it's footed it's a compote typically your compost are going to be your your footed taller bowls um or your lower your big big bowls this is almost more of a console bowl a bigger fruit bowl and there you can see this beautiful pattern here so there's hundreds of patterns and you can identify those online um you know there's a lot of great books that you can see and the neat part is is that every Glass House did have their unique iridescent finish to these pieces So based on the metallic salts that they used and the metals that they used and based on the temperature when they've applied them that would um dictate what color what iridescence and how strong or how deep it was um when those salts were put on and they actually mixed the chemicals um in a separate building at the Glass Factory that they referred to as dope houses and then they would apply them there and then as they would dry and then they would box them in straw and they would they would ship them out so this kind of gives you an idea of how to identify Carnival Glass we'll have more videos on identifying antique colored glass as well as antique crystal and those kinds of things be sure and check out all of our beautiful pieces on our website at www.cityfarmhouseantiques.com where we have more than just antiques we also have a lot of great spring decor be sure and give us a like on Facebook sign up for our newsletter so you can see all of our latest finds and be sure and check out all of our latest videos and let us know if there's something that you want us to cover in one of these videos to help you identify something you collect see you next time

Channel: City Farmhouse Antiques

Views: 29,568

Keywords: #cityfarmhouseantiques, #antiques, #collectibles, #carnivalglass, #antiqueglass, #coloredglass, #prettyglass, #vintage

Id: i-hQ60NyCew

Length: 10min 10sec (610 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 19 2023