Westmoreland Glass Company produced fine glass dinnerware and home decorations for over a hundred years. Established in 1889 as the Westmoreland Specialty Company, the firm began in the glass industry by making glass jars with lids and filling them with baking powder, mustard, and other condiments. The company also created glass novelties filled with candy, which were very popular during World War I. After World War I, Westmoreland followed the general trends in glass making, putting out colored glass in the 1930′s, until 1935, when consumer opinion turned to clear glass once again. When carnival glass was popular, Westmoreland produced at least six lines of carnival glass, including Checkerboard, Concave Flute, Corinth, Daisy Wreath, Parly Dots, Scales, and Smooth Rays. Westmoreland carnival glass patterns were produced in blue, amber and other common colors, and these designs depend more on simple geometric shapes to show off the carnival glass iridescence, where other glass companies made highly modeled carnival glass.
From the 1940s to the 1960s, Westmoreland reverted to plain, colored glass objects in amber, black and ruby. All through this period, and actually from the 1920s, Westmoreland English Hobnail proved popular with householders buying glass dinnerware. Made in several colors of transparent and opaque glass, this popular line has square, pointy protuberances, resembling tiny pyramids, all over each piece. The American hobnail by Westmoreland, on the other hand, uses round and rounded bumps, making it easy to tell the two lines of hobnail dinnerware apart.
Another popular pattern of milk glass Westmoreland is Beaded Edge. This pattern has round beads added to the edges of the dinnerware pieces, but they are placed shoulder to shoulder, covering the entire edge, unlike Candlewick, where the glass beads are spaced out along the edges of the dinnerware. There are also some Beaded Glass pieces where the band on the edge is made of red glass added to the milk glass body. This glassware is also found with painted birds, fruits, flowers and Christmas designs.
Quilt is a Westmoreland pattern made in milk glass, other opaque colors of glass and in transparent glass colors. This patterns resembles the cut glass pattern popular at the turn of the Nineteenth Century. Westmoreland made slag glass candy dishes in the forms of an animal on a next, and included decorated pieces and some with gold to highlight a special feature of the glass piece. Westmoreland even produced some ware that appear to be cut to clear, although, since molded, the outer color may be a transparent enamel paint.
There is considerable variation in the glass made by the Westmoreland Glass Company. All of it is pretty mainstream as Westmoreland usually went with the fashion of the day, in addition to some long running patterns the company kept in production. For that reason, collecting Westmoreland glass is a trip through Twentieth Century taste in pressed and molded glass dinnerware and home accents.
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