Just a quick note that the Gourmet website has a short article and pictorial slideshow about Dr. Peter Schlumbohm, the inventor of the modernistic Chemex Coffee Maker. I didn’t know anything about him, so it was an interesting read. The coffee maker was originally contracted out to Corning for the Pyrex glass and Alcoa for the other parts, but was assembled by the inventor and workers he hired. He was apparently a prolific inventor, with over 300 creations to his name, although none became as popular as the coffee maker.

Read: Chemex Coffee Maker Inventor

We were lucky to come across both of these at one thrift store the other day for a great price. The larger dish is a promotional 1.5 quart #023 round bottom casserole that is listed in our ref as “Frost Garland” (the name was one we had made up for now to identify it). It originally came with a glass domed lid and a wire candle warmer cradle. The frosted branch is just what we needed to cool down in this hot weather - it was in the 100s again today in L.A.

The small Pink Gooseberry Refrigerator Dish was a great find for a couple dollars - the couple of times I’ve seen one at the thrifts they’ve either been dishwashed or badly damaged. Plus, we got a lid to go with it. These #501 size Pyrex dishes are endlessly useful around the kitchen.

No, Martha hasn’t re-released the Pyrex New Dots set. But there was a sighting of an orange New Dots bowl in an issue of her Everyday Food magazine. It’s for a recipe for Crunchy Caramel Corn. This is definitely seems to be one of the more popular vintage patterns for prop and set designers to use in media, as we have also seen it many times on Food Network, specifically on Rachel Ray’s show.

At least in the Everyday Food picture, they’re only using the bowl to serve the dish. Others have taken a pretty heavy hand, using the vintage bowls for mixing and whatnot. I guess this is what they are meant to be used for - still, go easy on those bowls, celebrities!

Here’s the link to the bowl sighting and recipe on the website. I’m not sure what issue this is from - my mom actually gets this magazine but I somehow missed the picture. From the name of the picture file on their site, I believe it’s the 2007 Q4 edition of the magazine that had the picture.

Also, thank you to Stacey who originally posted a picture of her own Caramel Corn and the link to the Martha picture.

We’ve been trying to cut down on our pyrex “acquisition” lately. Still, it’s a little difficult to pass up things when they are a pretty good deal.

These 6 mugs were about three dollars, which while not dirt cheap is pretty good for 1410 style Pyrex mugs. Usually we only see the Old Town Blue pattern in this style. Three mugs in Butterfly Gold and three mugs in Summer Impressions, Ginger. These came from a thrift shop - there were actually more but I didn’t pick up all of them.

Then there are the odd finds where people just think the pattern is too common, or maybe they think it’s a newer item. For the casserole below, I thought the LID was 25 cents. When I picked it up and there was no price, I realized the entire casserole was a quarter. It looked brand new. This is a standard Spring Blossom #472 1.5 pint Bake Serve Store casserole.

Granted they aren’t extremely rare or promo items, but it’s fun to come away from a garage sale with something substantial and that you can use everday that isn’t cheap plastic.

Apologies for the lack of “Pyrex Finds” posts of late. We’ve actually been holding back on buying Pyrex lately, even though we have seen a ton of it. The reason is that we are getting to the point where we already have many of the pieces that we see at the thrift. We see no reason (yet) to try and hoard multiples of these pieces and are happy to let others discover them.

Since the Pyrex Love community has grown quite a bit over the last year, we also feel no need to have to pick up Pyrex opalware items in patterns that we don’t collect simply to get a picture of the pattern for the website. This is something we have done in the past. But because our house is filling up faster than we can find room for the odd Pyrex bowl, we’ll simply ask the community to contribute the pictures of items in patterns we don’t collect.

Here are two items we recently picked up that we didn’t have yet: the first is the Royal Promotional Divided Serving Dish that we found for $4. Although it didn’t have the cradle, it was in such good condition that we couldn’t pass it up. The blue of the divided base is a deep royal blue - this color seems a bit deeper than the Horizon Blue pieces. The clear cover has wonderful designs in gold leaf - remember to take care when washing those clear Pyrex items that have gold leaf or printed patterns. These are very susceptible to wear.

The other item we ended up getting was this 043 oval casserole in the Pink Daisy pattern. As usual, ours didn’t have a lid - but we didn’t mind since we have a few extras and the lids for these items aren’t decorated. This is the second item in the Pink Daisy (sometimes referred to in the catalogs as “WD” or “White Daisy” on Pink) pattern that we’ve come across.

We haven’t had a roundup of recent Pyrex finds for quite awhile. The Friendship pattern seems to have recently appeared more than once for us at the thrifts and swap meets. Shown here are a single #441 Cinderella Bowl, #503 1.5 quart Refrigerator Dish with lid, #475 Round Casserole with Lid, and a #473 Round Casserole without lid.

We also came across another #402 New Dots bowl in yellow - very hard to pass it up even though we’ve completed our set. You’ll recall Rachel Ray using them on her 30 Minute Meals show. And last, two nice Snowflake Blue #501 refrigerator dishes with lids. Not shown here is another Snowflake Blue item - a #402 bowl.

Some news of importance on the Pyrex front: Barbara Mauzy is releasing a new fourth edition version of PYREX: The Unauthorized Collectors Guide next month. The book will be available through Amazon.com, Schiffer Books (the book’s publisher) and at your favorite bookstore. If you’ve been a reader at Pyrex Love for awhile now, you know that this is one of our favorite Pyrex books. It formed our own introduction to the world of vintage Pyrex, and was part of the inspiration for the website.

We received some information from Barbara about the new book. This particular edition will have a few changes - specifically, some of the previously “unnamed” patterns at the end of the book will now have names assigned. In addition, there will be a few other small changes throughout the book. According to Barbara, the next version after this one will contain more changes and most notably will include more information on Pyrex Restaurant Ware.

So while you may not absolutely need to get your hands on the new edition if you have just bought the 3rd edition recently, we still feel that this is a valuable resource to have - especially for beginner collectors. The Pyrex Love website will help newer Pyrex collectors to a certain extent - however, it can also really help to have at least one physical book that you can put in the car to refer to when you’re out thrifting for Pyrex. =)

Just a quick note that over the next half year or so, we’ll be making changes to the overall pattern reference. We are going to be adding more restaurant ware / tableware patterns and will also be expanding the capability of the pattern engine to allow for the viewing by “all”, “tableware”, “promotional only”, “foreign pyrex”, etc. This will take quite a bit of time and configuration - if at any time you are getting a blank page or script errors, we are most likely working on it at the moment. In that case please check back again within a few days and it will most likely be working again. Thanks for your patience.

Also - we are now making it mandatory for those seeking to identify an unknown pattern or item to post it on the Pyrex Love Flickr group. This will give a much better chance of it being identified due to more eyes looking at it, plus it will take relieve some of the burden of answering by email so many questions about pyrex items on our own. Thanks again for your understanding with that.

The latest instance of vintage pyrex creeping back into modern media - we noticed a nice Designs casserole featured in the February 2008 issue of Craft. The article it appeared in was called “The Craft of Casseroles” a little nostalgia piece on the resurgence of those old time meals from the 60s and 70s where the casserole was a staple.

Shown was the author’s (Cathy Callahan’s) version of a “Zippy Beef Casserole”. Hm… reminds me a bit of Frito Pie…

Couldn’t resist posting about this one on the main blog - a complete boxed Beverage Server Set that we managed to scoop up. Originally, we thought the mugs were sold separately - they’re rather hard to come by. Full reference with pictures is here, and further box pictures are on the Flickr group here.