Saturday, August 16, 2014

The Fostoria Glass Gallery

Fostoria used to be home to many glass factories.  There were a pair of reasons for this.  One, gas was fairly abundant near Fostoria, so it was cheap to produce the heat necessary.  Two, Fostoria was on several train lines, so it was cheap to ship out finished goods and receive raw materials.
 I'm not going to try to figure out the different companies the glass came from because there were several of them.  Most of the glass made in Fostoria used sand from Indiana.  They could have gotten sand from Lake Erie but the sand from Indiana was cleaner and that made for better glass.  I never realized just how intricate glass could be.
 It's hard to believe that much of this was hand made.
 This gives you a pretty good idea of just how much glassware is here.  I would hate to think of how much this is all worth.  If I were to venture a guess, I would say probably pretty close to 1 million dollars.
 Nor did I realize that glass didn't necessarily have to be clear.
 Towards the back wall, there were some glass tiles.  I really liked this one because of all the birds.
 Another piece of glass tile.
 Some examples of red glassware. 
 This was a rose sugar shaker (I think).  I think this piece would fetch about $500 these days.
 A glass lamp.
 A glass Santa Claus.
 I kind of liked the scene painted on this glass lamp.
 Another glass pitcher.  I will have to say that the exhibit was very camera friendly.
 A chandalier.
I wanted a picture looking up at this one.  I thought it looked really cool.

I will have to say that the stop here was pretty cool.  The person running it was very friendly and he gave me a pretty good history behind both the town and the glassware.  If you are in Fostoria, I would highly recommend a stop here.

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