Compared to the turbulent years following the Civil War, conditions by 1880 had stabilized somewhat. The glass making industry had enjoyed many successes but changing economic conditions forced companies to come up with new ideas and products with wide appeal.

The old established companies on the East Coast, The New England Glass Company, The Boston and Sandwich Company and The Mount Washington Glass Company had been reluctant to give up making the more expensive flint glass and found it more and more difficult to compete with Mid-western companies making lime glass. (As was mentioned in an earlier article, the formula for lime glass had been discovered in 1864 by William Leighton who had come from The New England Company to work at the Hobbs Brockunier Company in Wheeling, West Virginia, and was much less costly to produce.)

At one point around 1880 The New England Glass Company was reported bankrupt. The Mount Washington Company closed for a while. The Boston Sandwich Company suffered labor problems.

Then in 1883, Joseph Locke scored decisively for The New England Company. The story is told of how Mr. Locke, quite by accident, discovered a process for making shaded glassware. As a batch of amber glass was "being cooked" or heated to the intensity required, it seems that Joseph Locke unavoidably dropped a gold coin into the batch. When he reheated a piece he was working on from this batch he noticed that the reheated part turned to ruby red making the piece shade from amber to red. He patented this new discovery as “Amberina Glass” and production started immediately. However, once the secret was out, other companies worked frantically to copy, improve, or develop new types of glass to ensure a fair share of the market.

This photo shows an amberina Pitcher and Bottle. These are reproductions from a West Virginia factory, late 20th century.

Another worker at The New England Glass Company learned to dip or encase a bubble of opaque white glass in molten amber glass to create a two-layered glass which, when reheated, turned amberina with a white lining. This new type of overlay glass was named "Plated Amberina".

The Hobbs Brockunier Company used basically the same process for making a two-layered shaded glass. New England's "Plated Amberina” is always pattern molded with vertical protruding ribs while the Wheeling product is either free-blown or blown into a mold for uniformity of size and shape. Hobbs Brockunier at Wheeling also made vases in the mold-blown "Wheeling Drape” pattern. The lining of Plated Amberina is a creamy opal color, while that of "Wheeling Peach Blow" is definitely white. There seems to be no explanation as to why Hobbs Brockunier called their lined amberina wares "Wheeling Peach Blow”. The Wheeling product was made in a line of several items and sold well. As for New England's Plated Amberina, so little of it was made that today it is almost without rival in the degree of desirability among collectors.

From this period, 1880-1890, came much of the lovely art glass that is typically American and which is sought by collectors allover the world. Glass manufacturers devised new methods and styles of decoration; created new color effects or imitated substances such as "mercury glass" or "tortoise shell" glass: and discovered a method whereby glass could be made to shade from one color to another by reheating portions. Amberina, Burmese, Rose Amber, Agata, and Wild Rose were all varieties of these shaded wares. Glass was also enameled to imitate porcelain, such as Royal Flemish and Crown Milano, or beaded to imitate coral, called Coralene.

This photo shows a Victorian Epergne. The glass vase is moth of pearl satin glass in the Diamond Optic pattern. The exterior surface is a rich medium rose color and the inside is a darker rose. the decoration is enamel and goal and the rim is crystal satin. the holder, made by Simpson, Hall and Miller Co., was originally quadruple plate but the silver is worn off.

The new style in this late Victorian period was to decorate every inch of the surface of a piece and, as a result, patterns in cut glass became more and more elaborate leading into the "brilliant" period. The set of cut glass Mary Todd Lincoln ordered for the White House in 1861 was very simply cut and enlivened by the Presidential Seal. By comparison, the set made by the same company for the 1876 Centennial was so elaborately cut that not half an inch of surface was without cut design.

Wouldn't it be fun to see into the future one hundred years hence and observe what collectors of the 2080's are collecting from the 1980's? What would you list from the glass category as collectible? Which company's wares could maintain high acclaim for one hundred years?