We got lucky recently and picked up a few more Spring Blossom Green Pyrex items to add to our growing collection of this pattern. First up is a Diagonal Handle mug in this pattern, which we’ve been wanting for quite awhile. It was sitting all by itself on the shelf at the thrift for a buck. These are the standard 1410 style mugs that we love to collect. Next, on the right, we found a slightly battered 401 Spring Blossom Green bowl in the older newer style pattern. The bowl had seen better days but was worth a pickup at a dollar. This is the pattern with the 3 leaf cluster, the bowl is also a slightly lighter shade of olive green. And lastly, we got another one of the Spring Blossom green Bake-Serve-Store casseroles (which is the old pattern). We haven’t had time to put it up in the actual ref yet. This one is quite shallow and holds only 1 pint - it is a standard #471 size. We’ve found a good alternate use for this casserole is as a large soup bowl. It came sans lid but we decided to get it anyway for $2.

We actually received word from user Mackem 54 on Flickr that today, September 28, 2007 was the last day that glass was made at the Pyrex plant in Sunderland - consequently ending the production of Pyrex in England. Pyrex had been produced for 85 years at the Sunderland site (and glassware in general had been produced at the site for over 150 years)

Arc International, who actually owned the plant (they bought it from Newell Ltd., who in turn had bought it earlier from Corning), decided to move production to France.

We’ll try and post more up about this historic event for Pyrex later on. Until then, here is the BBC news item and another one from the Sunderland Echo. Hm… I wonder if any special promotional pieces were issued on this last day at the plant? =)

Some site news for Pyrex Love: you may have noticed a few new things about the site in the last few months. We’ve added a limited search functionality to the site using google, as well as updated and added quite a few patterns in the picture reference. We also hope to have more new features coming up toward the end of the new year as time allows. We are planning on changing the functionality of the pattern page so you can view them by promotional or standard patterns - need to figure out how to do that in the code though!

Also, we may split the tableware patterns onto their own page, or at least put them separately from normal patterns. We are also trying to write more of the FAQ as we go along. And lastly, we eventually want to have some sections for international Pyrex: Canadian, British, and Australian/Agee! We’ll probably really need help with that, though, as we only have a few of those pieces ourselves.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed pictures to the main site or to the flickr group. It has enabled us to expand the reference quite a bit. We especially love to see Pyrex items with their original boxes, so if you own any of these please contribute a picture… thanks!

Thank you to our friend Barbara who passed these two colorful Pyrex lids on to us. They fit the standard #471-473 Bake Serve Store casseroles. We do know that one of them is from a Daisy casserole and the other is from a promotional casserole known as Blue Floral that matched a dish pattern by the same name. Barbara also gave us two standard clear refrigerator lids, one for the 501 dish and the other for the 502. It’s great to receive these because you never know when you’ll find a refrigerator dish base missing its lid!

Ok, so maybe I do have enough measuring cups already. =) The great thing about collecting these cups is that they are relatively cheap and you can find them readily at your local thrift shop for a few dollars or less. These are all that we currently have and include 2 older Fire King measuring cups, one 4 cup with blue writing and one 1 cup with black writing.

For the Pyrex cups (all with the older “closed” handle), we have three 2 cup ones. Two of those are definitely older. Then we have two 1 cup measuring cups and a dry measuring cup that is interesting because it has no spout.

We’ve gotten behind on posting stuff in the daily flow of the blog because of all the action going on over at the Flickr group. It’s sometimes easier to post pics over there, but we’ll keep coming back to the blog every so often. Here are two great sets of the standard D-Handle Mugs we’ve picked up recently. They are Citrus Orange and Steel Blue in color - we know the orange ones were meant to complement the “Citrus” Corelle pattern, but aren’t sure about the blue ones.

We had been looking for this older Pyrex Prize Recipes book printed in 1953 by Greystone Press for quite awhile now. Finally, we just got it off of Ebay. It’s quite a bit smaller than I had pictured, about 8 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches. I had thought it was the size of a notebook sheet of paper. The mug is a standard 1410 diagonal handle that i used to show the relative size. This cost $2.50 back in the day, and we got it for about that much not including shipping.

This is an interesting recipe book because it has quite a few color pictures of different types of Pyrex Ware including both standard Oven Ware, Flame Ware and Colored Oven Ware and Pyrex Dinnerware. It is actually comprised of recipes sent in by homemakers and users of Pyrex Ware.

I was sort of hoping it would have a few pics of promotional items in it, but as this was 1953 it was a bit too early still. The dishes shown are more utilitarian, although they are rather nice. Here are two sample pics on Flickr. They show the Hostess Sets quite a bit, as well as both lime, flamingo and yellow pie plates and bakers. Many of the pics show Flameware percolators being used for things other than coffee, which is kind of neat.

I’d been meaning to put up a full article on Magic Eraser usage and finally got a chance to make a start on one today. I’ll continue to put up new pictures of the “before and after” when using Magic Eraser - this is what takes so long.

Please read all the warnings about using this product with your Pyrex, especially if you have older, valuable items. We recommend using it to clean Pyrex with some definite reservations - it is a very convenient and quick way to try and take out marks on glassware in many cases.

Read Article: Magic Eraser and Pyrex

Sorry, for the lack of posts recently. We just haven’t had much time, and what little of that there is has been spent updating the reference pages and talking to folks over on the Pyrex Love flickr group. By the way, if you have a question and are thinking of submitting a picture for us to look at, it will save a whole lot of time if you just signup for a Flickr account and post your picture to the group. You will also get the combined knowledge of the group in answering your question, and there are several folks in the group who know more than us about patterns, etc.

OK, so only 1/3 of the pieces above are Pyrex - we have sort of expanded our thrift store hunts to include other glass manufacturers (and even some pottery). The 472 1.5 pint Snowflake Blue casserole has a pretty popular pattern that we usually see get snapped up quickly at the Salvo and goodwill stores.

The 8×8 baker is a Fire King dish with another popular pattern called “Candleglow”. These glass pans sure are useful to bake things like brownies… The Fire King measuring cup - we don’t know too much about the age of that one or whether it’s new or not. We think it must be 80s or before, though, because there is no metric on it. It’s a good sized 1 quart measuring cup.

Pyrex Mania! This isn’t really a “find”, but we finally had a chance to photograph most of the Promotional Oval 1 1/2 Quart Pyrex Casseroles (043/943 numbers) that we own. I think a few are still in storage, though. These 1.5 quart casseroles were one of the most popular sizes for promotional items - they came in a variety of colors, lid designs, and with or without a whole assortment of different cradles.