Collecting Glass Animals

By Les Stewart

Collecting glass animals from the Depression Era can be a fun collection. People collect about every possible glass from the Depression Era. Individuals collect by pattern, com- pany, item type, color, and more variations such as children’s glass. One of the more rewarding collections possible is glass animals from the Depression Era.

A glass animal collection can be fun and is extremely valuable when completed. Glass animal collectors have the same problem though as faced by the more general Depression Era collector in determining what to collect. You can just collect all glass animals, but that may get expensive. You can collect by item where you only collected horses, birds, or some other animal. You could have a very attractive collection of nothing but glass horses as example. You can also collect glass animals by company. The early glass companies starting in the 30s-40s such as Heisey, Fostoria, Cambridge, Fenton, New Martinsville, and more all made glass animals. Later glass animals were made in the 50s-70s from Fostoria, Viking, and oth- ers. You could have a special collection from just one compa- ny such as collecting only Heisey glass animals. Lastly, you could also collect by color and have only crystal, blue, or other colors of animals in your collection. Most animal collectors I have met tend to collect only the early crystal animals or only the later colored animals.

      The glass animals produced early in the Depression Era tended to be crystal. As example, those by Heisey were for the most part crystal. In the 50s and later the glass companies began creating animals with color. There are some ear- lier colored animals and some later crystal, but most of the crystal is older and most of the colored animals are newer. Fostoria tended to mostly use three colors of amber, green, and blue in their colored animals. Viking and others used these three colors as the main colors and also created harder to find items in ruby red, black, white, and more.

      Glass animals from the Depression Era share the same problem of reproductions that is a problem for almost all an- tiques. Like other reproductions, if you know what to look for the differences between old and newer animals can be detected. Sometimes it is just the color. Some early crystal animals from New Martinsville were brought out again later by Viking in color after New Martinsville changed their name to Viking. Imperial managed to remake many of the Heisey animals in both crystal and in color. The pig family in crystal could be either Heisey or Imperial, but in cobalt blue they would be Im- perial. The crystal animals from Heisey and Imperial may appear identical to the naked eye, but under black light there is a different greenish glow to the older Heisey animals.

A really great reference for Glass Animal collectors is the Glass Animals reference book by Dick & Pat Spencer. It is now in a newer second edition with many great new animals shown. The book can be used as an approximate guide in determining glass animal value. I believe there are other older glass animal books that could be out of print.