My Vessel Of Choice
It’s a funny thing, when I think about it. When I go to the cupboard to grab a glass when I’m hankering for some milk or iced tea, I find myself reaching for the same vessel each time.
After so many years of household bliss, there are probably 12 or 14 mismatched glasses in the cupboard. Some were gifts. Others were garage sale finds or department store purchases. One or two were won at a school festival. Some were inherited.
Yet lately I have singled out one particular glass. It’s a clear, thin glass of medium height with some etchings on the side. Just the right size for my beverage of choice, it’s the kind of glass that feels good in your hand. You know, not too heavy or clumsy to hold.
Then it hit me. Yes, it’s my idea of the perfect glass. Maybe I choose it because it came from the china closet of my childhood home. It was one of many glass items my mother had collected over the 60 years in the same house. Funny, how this particular glass was the only one of its kind that survived the Hamm tribe of children, grandkids and great-grandkids. I feel it was fate that it landed a place in my home.
I never understood why all those plates and dishes and glasses meant so much to my mom. Maybe it was the Great Depression era in which she was raised that spurred the need to collect such things when she got married. To me they were just things I had to wash, dry and put away in the tall china cupboards that held her treasures.
One of her favorite field trips with some of us kids in tow was to the local glass factories — Fostoria — in particular because it was in her hometown of Moundsville.
We managed to break dishes and glasses at home with flying footballs and horsing around, requiring her to keep replacing items with some new, mostly mismatched sets of dishes. Even at garage sales she would buy whole sets of dishes because they were a good buy “and someone can use them.” She was right, of course. And she developed a keen eye for “good dishes” as opposed to cheap knock-offs. We learned to read labels and recognize the stamp of a true work of art among the plates and bowl, serving pieces and so on.
Special occasions meant pulling out the green hobnail glass luncheon plates. We overutilized those plates as they were brought out of the rounded glass-front china closet for each brunch celebration held after a baptism in the family of 12. The green plates are now safely in the hands of one of my sisters.
We have been spoiled in the Ohio Valley to have such a variety of craftsmen and women who turned out spectacular glass on which to dine or share a special toast. From the early years of the Hobbs Brockhurst & Co., to Imperial Glass, Blenko Glass, Fenton Art Glass and the still-popular Homer Laughlin line of Fiestaware, we are rich in glass history. Take a trip to the Mansion Museum at Oglebay and or view the glassware at the nearby Glass Museum. There just might be a special glass waiting there for you.
Heather Ziegler can be reached via email at: hziegler@theintelligencer.net.
COMMENTS