Topic: 75 inch blown glass hollow cane, baton, spiral ribbon pattern

[whitelion9370]

I have to admit this piece has certainly brought more questions to my dinner table then i can answer. All i know is my godfather who would have been 95 years old last month, got it from his childhood  barber in Dubois ,Pa.  He said it was always in the barber shop,up on the wall, along with a white one with ribbon pattern but that one perrished in a fire. he drove from Dubois Pa to Yardley Pa with the ball on the back dash of his car and the point dangled from the rear view mirror by a rubberband. that took alot of nerve. well its made it this long. Ive done some research and have yet to find one this long in one piece, im sure the museums have them, I was told it came from a glasshouse in a city that began with an F. in Pa, i sure would love to be able to say i knew where it came from.

[deco.queen]

What a wonderful piece to have!! Here's an article about them. http://www.canequest.com/glass-canes.asp
Janice

[Ivo]

Fostoria?

[Lustrousstone]

Your pictures are tiny and don't enlarge. Can you resize the originals to about 700 pixels on the longest dimension. The board will then make the thumbnails automatically. You have 125kb per picture

[whitelion9370]

hipe these are better

[Frank]

Wonderful. :mrgreen:

Some Pa glassworks with an F were;
Fidelity Glass Works, Tarentum (Drug ware, Pressed glass, bottles & Crystal),
Fitzpatrick Glass mfg, Falls Creek (Window and glassware),
C. L. Flaccus Glass Co, Tarentum (Preseed glass and Crystal).
Federated Glass Co., Point Marion (window glass)
H C Fox & Sons, Philadelphia (bottles)

[jsmeasell]

Also H. C. Fry (Rochester, PA).

As canes go, this is a very nice example.

I disagree with some of the statements in "canequest.com" especially the notion that these were "end of day" items made from essentially worthless material. Skilled glassworkers could have made these before the start of a turn (so-called "fixing up" time), between turns, or after a turn (especially the Saturday morning turn). The material isn't worthless, as prudent manufacturers calculated the cost per pound of every glass color in production.

A cane would need to be annealed in the lehr, of course, but this need not be overnight, as the process takes 2-4 hours and must be begun very soon after the cane is completed.

Union workers (American Flint Glass Workers Union) used their canes in Labor Day (first Monday in September) parades and other local parades, and the annual AFGWU conventions about 1912-24 featured the Gazam group of veteran glassworkers who had canes as they escorted delegates from the railway stations to the convention meeting hall and also during an evening social during which they did a close order drill performance. I have seen references to a film of a c. 1918-19 performance, but I haven't been able to locate a copy.