As far as new discoveries, we have a few things I can point to today. We stumbled a very ornate silver plate teapot, creamer and open sugar bowl that were NOT produced in Southern New England. This is not a great set, but from a company seldom seen. It is from the Van Burgh Silverplate Company of Rochester, NY. The condition of these pieces leaves something to be desired and this will be marketed as an inexpensive set, but it will have some interest to someone who is interested in repairing one significant dent and another small crease and to polish these pieces back to their original beauty. Did I mention that we found another wonderful piece of Nippon with excellent moriage work. I will list it momentarily. It bears the mark of the Morimura family (founders of the ceramic trade empire from Noritake). I predict little interest, despite the quality and increasing scarcity of these pieces.

It's time to be a bit more specific on glass subjects. Today I thought I would start a series of blogs on Early American Pattern Glass, called EAPG by collectors. You wil someimes see these pieces referred to as Early American Pressed Glass which is technically correct, (the glass was pressed), but not a generally accepted term.  EAPG is hard to define, and there is a huge amount of it made by many companies.  To keep the term useful, there have to be some arbitrary limits.  EAPG is generally considered to be the glass produced between about 1830 to 1915.  It is machine-made glass produced with molds.  The decorative patterns are meant to appear similar to cut crystal, and the body of the glass was therefore much thicker than other forms of glassware of the period.  Although machine made, EAPG was typically done one piece at a time with extensive handwork to remove mold marks, clean up minor surface defects made by the molds themselves and to hand-shape features that were not amenable to mold forms.  Some pieces were complex and made in multiple molds requiring hand assembly to create the final product.  It can be said to be the ancestor of both the production-line depression glass and the hand-worked elegant glass of the depression era, but it is distinquished from both.  Much more EAPG was done in clear glass than later types of glass, but colored pieces are not really rare, simply outnumbered by clear glass pieces.  There are a few pieces made by the marriage of clear glass with colored glass to create very interesting patterns.  There are a very large, but probably finite number of patterns in the EAPG realm, and many are composed of various permutations of a few dozen common design elements.  Names of patterns can be confusing because the manufactrers were often prosaic (#76 round), so collectors stepped in with their own more descriptive, if inconsistent names (Eyewinker, Cut Log, Reverse Torpedo).  The common design elements were also assigned names such a hobstar, cane, bull's eye, paneled jewel).  One other defining characteristic of EAPG is the prevalence of pieces that did not continue into later eras.  A spooner or a celery vases, lemon squeezers and straw holders are not found in depression era glassware, but are well represented in EAPG.

If you have or think you have EAPG pieces and want to identify them, it is essential to turn to the standard references and do some serious research.  For beginners, any edition of Warman's Pattern Glass will provide a fair introduction.  There are many more speciaized works, most concentrating on a single manufacturer's items.  There is also an otstanding website that will help you get your feet wet.  It was create dby long-time collector and dealer, Phyllis Petcoff.  Every collector should stop here and look, study and learn.  As of today, her website can be found at: www.petcoff.com/ .  Tomorrow I'll try to get some pictures from my archive to illustrate a few of these points.

AS for eBay and Auctiva news, we are runnibg our first 3-day auctions, (ending tomorrow).  Normally I cannot recommend this to sellers, but in this case we were asked to try to market tickets to a music festival in Northern New York less than a week before the concert date.  I'll keep you posted on whether I still think this is not a great idea in my next blog.  Someday soon we;ll also delve into packaging, the Postal Service, photography and ethical photo editing.  See you then.