Tiffin Satin Glass

I've collected elegant glass made mostly in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia made in the 1920's to the 1940's for over 20 years.  This passion never gets old and I love to learn about the colors, the patterns, the etchings and the various ways you can identify a piece of glass. Tiffin is one of my favorite makers, which operated in one form or another between 1889 and 1940 in Tiffin, Ohio which is in the northern part of the state, almost to Lake Erie.  I have an entire library of glass books. This is a very good one on Tiffin:

You need a good set of books to help you date the glass, look at patterns you'll never see in person and identify the colors.  Colors are unique to each company - each blue or green is different depending on the company and the stems of the glasses will also help identify a company or a pattern. Etchings were not always made by the company so an etching can be a less reliable way to identify glass.

My glass collection in general is mostly stemware. I have some decanters, a few bowls and candlesticks too.  But Tiffn makes these lovely bulb boxes that were created to force flower bulbs. I have only seen them in satin glass.  These are very art deco and lovely to use for bulbs or to just look at. Life was so refined way back when.  We have fallen so far from the tree in that regard.  These boxes are very hard to find. I have a black satin one, a sky blue one (my favorite) and I recently found an emerald green and a light green one.  I have never seen all of the colors - it comes also in crystal satin, a rose pink satin, an amber satin and a reflex green satin. Below are the blackm sky blue and the emerald green ones.

This is the nymph pattern on the side of the bulb box:

I also love the satin twisted candlesticks which come in many colors. This is the emerald green.

You can find these on Ebay and Etsy often for reasonable prices.  These really show off the colors.  This is the light green in a sugar bowl currently on Etsy.  I would use this for nuts or candy on a table. It is lovely.

This is a vase also on Etsy.  So art deco.

Vases are more collectable and hard to find and are often quite expensive. 

I love this bud vase too:

Many of these old glass companies have museums in the cities they were founded and Tiffin is no different. I have not been to the Tiffin Museum but would love to see it. Many collectors give their glass to the museums and this is a great way to see pieces you'll never see otherwise - the really rare stuff.  But I love the thrill of the hunt, the discovery of something you've never seen before, the beauty of the colors of the glass, and the fact that this stuff is so elegant and so old.  We don't live in a world today where we embrace this in our culture but I do at my house!