 | Susan Friend is Owner/Operator of Between Friends, a specialty gift boutique for 4 years. After graduating from WSU with a major in Sociology, Susan worked for Senior Services in Wichita with the Meals on Wheels program. Susan and her husband, Jason Stuhlsatz share their home with their "kids", two Collies; Jenny Lee and Cleo. You can contact Susan @ (316) 685-2240 or @ 8336 E 21st St. Siute 600. |
Specialty Gifts
2004-08-01 11:28:00
Sand, soda, lime and lots of heat
ANSWER: History sets the beginning of glass production nearly twenty-five hundred years earlier than the first century account in Mesopotamia where potters fused sand and minerals while firing their clay into glass. Nearly a thousand years later one clever Mesopotamian managed to form a glass tube and blow a bubble at the end, creating the first blowpipe and hence the art of glassblowing.Dating back thousands of years, skilled men endured the tremendous heat to coax beautiful forms from the fire using nothing more than their breath and a few simple tools. They worked hard to polish their skills to uniformity precision, but even so, each creation was as individual as the maker. In the 1820's Bakewell, Page, and Bakewell introduced the first real development in production glassblowing since the blowpipe, a development that would change how glass was used forever. They patented a process of mechanically pressing hot glass. Suddenly the time-consuming handcrafting that all glass had required was no longer necessary and nearly everything around the home began to be made of glass. Today glass is so common that we take it for granted. The process to make glass, once a secret, now is public knowledge that only requires only a little sand, a little soda, a little lime and a lot of heat! Glass has been able to sustain the ups and downs of economic times. Good collectible pieces have managed to increase in value regardless of the current economy. In Ferry, Ohio in 1905, Frank L Fenton and his brother John decided to open a glass decorating shop in Martins. A year later they moved to Williamstown, West Virginia where they built their own glassworks. In their first year they exhibited carnival glass (which they called Iridill) at a trade show and it was an instant success. For the next fifteen years the Fenton Company made carnival glass as one of its main products, and until the outbreak of war in 1914, Fenton could sell virtually everything they could produce in carnival glass. The fortunes of the company have been up and down during the past ninety years; in the Depression years they made mixing bowls for the Dormeyer company (to go with electric mixers) and hobnail perfume bottles for Wrisley, and these two major contracts saved the company from failing when many others went bankrupt. Another slump in the hand glass industry in the 1940's and 1950's saw many other companies go out of business. Once again, Fenton survived, and once again they found a magic product. From 1952 onwards they made and sold tons of items in milk glass (white glass that looks like porcelain) especially hobnail milk glass. Milk glass became Fenton's top-selling line, and the company expanded in the 1950's and 1960's. Carnival glass entered a new phase of popularity in the 1970's, mostly with collectors. The Fenton logo, an oval with Fenton written in script, was introduced in 1970 on carnival glass pieces, to distinguish them from pieces made in earlier times. This was such a successful idea that it was extended to all Fenton glassware produced from 1974 onwards. Fenton glassware from the 1980's can be identified by the tiny number 8 under the 'n' in Fenton.
