Antique and Vintage Cranberry Glass

Cranberry glass, traditionally called ruby glass in Europe, is made by adding gold salts (technically, gold chloride) to batches of molten glass. Gold is what gives cranberry glass its pink to red hue. The more gold that is used, the deeper the red, but the amount of gold used in even the reddest cranberry glass is minor, which is why color alone is not a factor in the price of vintage cranberry glass. While variations of the technique to produce cranberry glass appear to go back to the Roman Empire, the recipe for cranberry glass was apparently lost for more than a millennium. The form reappeared in the 1600s, perhaps simultaneously, in Italy, Germany, and Bohemia. Today, most collectors of vintage cranberry glass focus on the work of Victorian glassmakers in England, along with the output of 20th-century American glass manufacturers such as Indiana, Pilgrim and Fenton. Fenton added cranberry glass to its repertoire in the late 1930s. Vintage Fenton cranberry glass from this early period was made in the hobnail pattern; later, cranberry would color coin-dot pieces, as well as pitchers and cruets with swirling sides and riffled rims. It would also be used as the base for a number of hand-painted, Mary Gregory-style objects, from dimmer bells to decorative baskets. By the 1950s, an opalescent flavor of cranberry was being used on numerous Fenton patterns. Another West Virginia glass company, Pilgrim, didn't get into the cranberry market until 1968, when the company's plant manager, Karel Konrad, developed a proprietary recipe for the alluring hue. Pilgrim used cranberry in its crackle pieces, its thick cased vases, and a range of pinched, squat, and slender decanters.