Alex Heberling

There isn’t much left to do out at Grey Gardens.  (The tongue-in-cheek name we gave to my late grandmother’s house.)  The estate sale was in September, then we finally got a dumpster out there to haul off whatever was leftover that didn’t get donated to the Salvation Army.  We kept a few things for ourselves, as well as some things we didn’t want to just give away or throw away.

This is where the milk glass comes in.  My sister and I had always planned to save these for eBay, but when the funds were held up in probate court, and we couldn’t set up eBay and PayPal accounts for the estate, we ran out of time and they ended up going into the estate sale instead.  But to our utter astonishment, only a few small pieces of it sold!  So we were still stuck with the milk glass.  Now that everything’s pretty much done, Kelly and I are taking it upon ourselves to take care of eBay stuff using our personal accounts.  She’s doing the zillion pairs of riding boots.

I’m doing the milk glass.

I can sort of see the appeal of this stuff, but it’s not really my thing.  It’s a little kitschy.  Too old and quaint and… grandmotherly.  And two of those adjectives would definitely NOT have described my grandmother, amusingly enough.

Now, I already knew the manufacturers of one particular pattern; it’s Westmoreland Glass’ “Old Quilt”.  Thankfully, all the Westmoreland glass is marked with a logo somewhere on the bottom of each piece.

For good measure, she threw in a piece of WG’s “Paneled Grape” pattern as well.

The rest of the glass took some research, however.  And thus the title of this blog post:  after only a few hours of googling and cross-referencing photos on eBay, I now know more than I ever wanted to know about milk glass, the various manufacturers of milk glass, and the differences between similar patterns produced by manufacturers of milk glass.

These are Anchor Hocking pieces:

As you can see, Anchor Hocking glass is a little more transparent, more like skim milk glass (rimshot!)  and, unfortunately, of lesser quality.  I might put these all together as a single lot and see what happens.

These are E.O. Brody Company:

The three vases are nice and opaque, but the planter thing is more skim milk like the Anchor Hocking stuff.  Brody Glass tended to make things for everyday use, and not so much fine dinnerware, so these aren’t worth a lot either.

Here is a single piece of Duncan Glass:

A tiny little bowl, possibly a toothpick holder.  This pattern is called “Daisy and Button” which is rather cute.  There was a little milk glass shoe we had in this same pattern, but it sold at the estate sale.

This is an Indiana Glass bowl, “Wild Rose” pattern.  We’ve got four of these puppies.

This bowl has a few relatives floating around eBay and the internet, but no one seems to know what manufacturer it is.  The name of the pattern appears to be “Lily Pons,” and is apparently often mislabeled as the Wild Rose pattern above.

I haven’t been able to figure out the maker of this powder box, but there are some other pieces on eBay with the same or similar quilted pattern.  None of them had a manufacturer identified, so of course I’m probably going to see this on Antiques Roadshow someday for $40,000 when I sold it for $10 or something.

And lastly, this unidentified vase.  It’s so simple, I had no luck whatsoever finding a manufacturer for this one.  An identical vase is on eBay right now, but again the seller doesn’t have a company listed, so I’m out of luck.

And that’s the story of me and the milk glass.