These obverse decorated designs were hand-painted and fired on this pair of glass hurricane shades. The design is very reminiscent of a design found on Pairpoint's Ambero shades. If anyone can help provide any insight or additional information about these shades, we would be grateful. Please contact us through our Message Center. Click the button below and you will be redirected there. Marion and Sandy Frost

For more than twenty years, documentation of this engraving pattern has eluded us. We find examples of this pattern on numerous Pairpoint shapes that appear to have been made from the latter part of the Middle Period (1930s) into the Gundersen-era (1938-1952); most of those examples are on shapes more closely associated with Gundersen. Every example of this pattern we have seen has been on an amethyst blank.
 
Yesterday we received a pattern identification inquiry from one of our website visitors. During our conversation, mention was made by our visitor about the bowtie feature being used by Hawkes. The “light bulb” went off in my head; I pulled out my Hawkes reference books and almost immediately found the pattern on a liquor set.
 
This pattern was designed and stone-engraved by Joseph Hahne, an engraver who worked for no other glass company than Hawkes. Mr. Hahne had been an engraver in Corning since WW1, but from the 1930s until his death in 1944, he only worked for Hawkes from his home studio. It is well documented that Hawkes acquired many of their blanks from Pairpoint. Given the fact that his employment with Hawkes spanned the Pairpoint to Gundersen transition years, it is easy to explain why so many Gundersen shapes are found with Hahne’s pattern.
 
To be consistent with my own standard, I think items found with this pattern should be attributed to Hawkes; they purchased the blanks from Pairpoint or Gundersen and finished them for sale. However, we are keeping the attribution, for identification purposes, within our Pairpoint system; in this case the shape will be the primary identifier for most collectors. Since no official name is known, we have chosen to describe this pattern as the HAHNE PATTERN.
 
Marion Frost
January 24, 2021

​      Some of you may already be aware of a special product line, introduced in the mid-teens, named Ambero. This product line was decorated by Pairpoint’s Lamp Department and, while unique unto itself, has visual similarities to Pairpoint’s Puffy and Reverse-Painted lamp shades. There was a nice variety of shapes within this line and several decorating patterns. Probably, the most commonly seen Ambero item is the Candle Lamp, having a very distinctive hurricane shade with amber ground and reverse-painted decoration and almost always found on a beautifully turned mahogany wooden base with brass trimmings. An example can be seen in the left-hand image. According to Mt. Washington & Pairpoint Glass, Volume Two, by Ken Wilson and Jane Spillman, Page 230, there were three different base shapes and three decorating patterns associated with the Ambero Candle Lamps. According to Wilson/Spillman, the patterns were #860 – Chestnut, #880 – Unidentified, and #887 – Grapes.

      Recently a friend of ours, John Stewart III, sent us an image of a very unusual Ambero Candle Lamp from his collection having a hurricane decoration of what appears to be a Dragonfly on a pinkish-lavender ground. We have never seen this decoration before and thought we would share it with our readers. We have to wonder if this design could be the unidentified #880 design we mentioned in the previous paragraph, or a special order. We would love to know. Let us hear from you.

Marion and Sandy Frost
October 7, 2020
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Pairpoint Lamp enthusiasts will recognize the lamp shown above as the rare line having a decorated glass base that matches the decorated glass shade. Most commonly seen, and probably the most popular, is the Seagull Design. The lamp is catalogued as C3069.

The lamp base to the left is what is in The Frost Collection. The lamp to the right is what it is supposed to be when it has its shade. Thus, the reason for this post.

If anyone out there has the shade without a base, we offer our base for sale. If anyone out there has the shade for sale, we would like the opportunity to purchase it. Either way is OK for us, but wouldn't it be nice to get each part back together again?

Just click the "Contact Us" button.

Sandy and Marion
​September 3, 2020

Usually we receive inquiries from our visitors seeking assistance in identifying Pairpoint glass. The roles are now reversed as we are seeking help from our visitors to help us identify the figurine below. If you can assist, please click the red button to the right which will take you to our Message Center.

This is terrific news for collectors of Pairpoint's Brilliant-era Cut Glass.

When Sandy and I started collecting Pairpoint glass, our interest was limited to items made between World War I and World War II, a period we call the "Middle Period." The ending of World War I coincided with the public's waning interest in Pairpoint's Brilliant-era cut glass. Except for some items that were clearly transitional, we paid scant attention to the beautiful cut glass that came before. As we gathered research material for our books, and ultimately this website, we acquired almost 300 Pairpoint catalog pages highlighting cut glass. For almost twenty years, these catalog pages have been in our archives.

We regularly receive inquiries from visitors to our site to assist with identifications of items they have. Mostly, these inquiries are for Pairpoint items dating from the Middle Period. However, of late, we have been receiving messages from a number of collectors having to do with the earlier cut glass patterns. As much as we hate to turn people away, we tell them that Pairpoint's cut glass is outside of our focus....in other words, we know slim to none, and Slim left on the morning train to Yuma.

Then, the light bulb flashed brightly...we realized we don't have to know anything because we had the catalog pages that speak for themselves. By applying the technique we used for our books and website, we extracted from each catalog page every unique pattern in those 300 pages. We came up with a total of 274 individual patterns that we cropped, enlarged, enhanced, and tweeked so that collectors could see them in a large format...and, most unique of all, IN ONE PLACE!

So...Please visit the NEW Tab titled "Pairpoint Cut Glass Patterns" located at the bottom of the menu listings. Many of the patterns shown were included on numerous catalog pages; we had to select those that gave the best singular appearance in the photo gallery. If anyone requests a copy of other views of any patterns, we will attempt to accommodate them.

Marion and Sandra Frost
The Frost Collection
​July 14, 2020

I want to caution anyone thinking of shipping one of Pairpoint's Large (12") Swans. This is the result of a very recent and sad experience. Although a Swan I shipped was packed extremely well (double-boxing, over-size box, bracing, etc), the postman at the point of delivery dropped the box as he tried to carry it on his shoulder. The sudden impact caused the Swan's head and neck to breakaway at the point of attachment to the bowl. Part of the bowl remained attached to the neck. It is my conclusion (from an engineering viewpoint) that the inertia during the fall combined with the length and heavy weight of the neck and head exposed the inherent weakness at the point where the heavy neck joined the much thinner bowl portion. Had the package fallen at a different angle, the outcome would likely have been different. Given the "perfect storm" nature of this event, I don't think any additional cushioning would have helped. Since we cannot control Murphy's Law, my advice is to avoid shipping the large swans if at all possible. I do not believe the smaller swans would be at risk due to the much lighter and shorter necks and heads.

Marion Frost
​March 14, 2020

For many years we have seen on eBay and other retail sources a variety of Pairpoint Lamp Shade replicas. If memory serves me, I recall during the 1990s, a dealer friend telling me that a large quantity of original un-decorated glass shades had been scavenged from the closed Pairpoint plant, and that they were being decorated in the after-market. It wasn't very difficult discerning the originals from the latter. Sellers have always been fairly open and honest when representing a lamp to be a "Pairpoint Puffy or Reverse-Painted Lamp."

Today, for the first time, I've noticed a replica base being offered for sale. In all fairness, the base was offered as a "Pairpoint-style" lamp base, and I am not claiming anything nefarious at all. The Seller offers full disclosure that the base is made in Taiwan by the Odyssey Lamp Company. With all candor, I think the workmanship is good and the appearance is true to the original designs.

Now for my reason for writing...we all know that as time passes, and new collectors come to the market, attribution can get fuzzy. There are those that eventually decide to take some liberties with the facts. I merely want to alert our visitors to our observations. With regard to Pairpoint Lamp authentication, every lamp base I've seen has been clearly signed (by casting or incision) under the foot. The Mahogany wood bases have their catalog numbers incised into the washer-nut that holds the lamp together. This is just a reminder to those collectors, who may be new to this collecting area, to be careful. As the old saying goes, "Caveat Emptor."

Marion Frost
​March 7, 2020

We have all tried to figure out the correct names for different stem shapes. I'm not sure anyone could be 100% sure, but thought it would be of value to know how Pairpoint Engraver, Walter N. Stafford (1926-1938), identified them in his personal notebook: See below.  Marion Frost

​Some of our visitors know that Sandy and I have been collectors of Pairpoint Glass since 1990. Over that time we have acquired as many examples of Pairpoint shapes, colors, and engraving patterns as we could in order to build the research work that led to the publication of our two books and the development of this website. Along the way we often found fine items of glass made by some of Pairpoint’s competitors. If the price was right, we added them to our Frost Collection. Many of those items, in addition to some of our Pairpoint duplicates, have been recently added to our sales gallery tab, “Frost Collection For Sale.”
 
We invite all of our visitors to spend a few moments reviewing our private offerings. One of the benefits of shopping our sales gallery is that no sales or processing fees, normally associated with eBay and PayPal, are built into the asking price. While we have priced our items reasonably, we certainly welcome inquiries and offers.
 
So before leaving our website, why don’t you take a few moments to visit our gallery, and then return as often as you like. We are more than happy to provide answers to any questions as well as additional photographs for serious inquiries; just complete the simple form. We also welcome any queries about specific items that we may have but are not showing in the gallery.
 
Marion and Sandra Frost