Archive for September, 2011

Akro Agate Glass and Collecting

Wednesday, September 14th, 2011

Why Akro Agate?

The Akro Agate Company takes the first part of its name from its place of origin. Although a new plant was later built in Clarksburg, West Virginia, the company was established in Akron, Ohio, hence “Akro.” The second part of the name is from the company’s aim to make glass marbles. The opaque glass marbles with mottled colors were made to resemble marbles made from agate, and are called “aggies.” Thus, the Akron agate marble company, or the Akro Agate glass company.

Children’s Play Sets

For two decades in the early Twentieth Century, marbles proved to be a profitable business for Akro Agate. With an increase in foreign competition, however, it became necessary for the company to diversify. In keeping with the toy focus, Akro Agate began making play sets of dinnerware for little girls. These dinner sets are highly collectible today, and those still in the original box are especially desired. The opaque glass dinnerware pre-dated china and metal play sets, and, obviously, the plastic sets of today.

Planters and Pots

Akro Agate also ventured into the florist pot and planter business to broaden their business base. The Westite Company had closed and Akro Agate was able to buy some of their molds, which they began to produce in the swirled opaque glass they used for their other products. All the Akro Agate wares are marked with a capital A with a crow flying through the upper half. The crow has marbles in each foot and in its beak, but these details are so small that they are hard to see.

Collecting Akro Agate

If you have a “end of day” or marbled glass items in your collection, you may well have Akro Agate glass. You may also have some of their marbles if you have an old collection of marbles, but it will probably take an expert’s eye to sort them from the marbles made by other companies in the US and abroad. Look for the “slag” products of this company at glass shows and antique stores, as well as flea markets and garage sales.

Learn about other glass collectibles in the Glass Collectibles Guide.

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Collecting Haviland Porcelain

Friday, September 2nd, 2011

Haviland China is an American based company with production facilities in the Limoges area of France. David Haviland, a dealer in fine china from New York, went to this famous porcelain producing area of France to build his china factory in order to capitalize on the deposits of kaolin in that area. Kaolin is one of the required ingredients to produce hard paste porcelain and is the reason for so many porcelain factories are located there. Mr. Haviland was also able to use trained factory workers from the area to get his own products in production as quickly as possible. With the fine raw materials available, and continual process and china decorating improvements during the 19th and 20th Centuries, the Haviland Company has remained one of the premier china dinnerware companies of the Western World.

The Haviland Company remains in the hands of the Haviland family to this day, and the fourth generation now runs the business. Over the century and a half the company has been in business, thousands of different dinnerware patterns have been produced by the Haviland Limoges facility, and identifying them properly has become something of a problem. In the 1930s, Arlene Schleiger began the process of identifying those patterns produced by the company up to that time, and six volumes of pattern documentation resulted from her efforts. Schleiger numbers are still used to identify Haviland dinnerware patterns to this day, where possible, but there are still hundreds of patterns that have not been included in the documentation. These may well be dinnerware patterns that were produced in small numbers during the years when the company did not see any reason to keep detailed records.

Haviland not only produces hundreds of their own designs, they will also produce a dinnerware set based on a purchaser’s design. These are usually coats of arms or other family symbols, but the company will work with the purchaser to produce any design required.

The secondary market has many Haviland porcelain pieces available. Often these are the little-used pieces of the dinnerware set, like oyster or bone plates. Place settings of various patterns also show up on the secondary market, and there are companies devoted to helping purchasers complete their dinnerware sets. Look for the Haviland Limoges maker’s mark when viewing fine porcelain at primary or secondary china stores.

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