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.

Hey there, just a few items of note. Firstly: over the next two months until the new year, we are going to be adding a lot more posts and in general filling out the reference as much as possible as time allows. In the past, we’ve often waited to enter things into the reference until we had time to write up a long descriptive post. From reader feedback - it seems like people would much rather we spend the time getting whatever info (even if limited) up into the ref as fast as possible, as opposed to writing many paragraphs for each entry. We’ve decided that’s probably a good idea, so we’ll be entering as many as possible from now until January.

Secondly, we just launched a new site called Mad About Mugs that we’d like you to visit - and link to us if you so desire. =) We realized that in our search for Pyrex we come across so many different types of mugs that aren’t made of Pyrex… and we needed a place to feature all of them. The site will be run similar to Pyrex Love - a little bit blog, a little bit reference. But we’ll be focusing less on super-detailed post entries on individual mugs as opposed to a variety of posts. If you’ve got a mug collection, please let us know about it! You can also post it to the Flickr group we’ve set up for Mad About Mugs.

We’ve been neglecting to post about our Pyrex finds lately - the reason being we haven’t made it out to the flea markets lately. However, we have come across a few items at the thrifts. Here’s today’s haul - with the nicest piece being a New Horizon Promotional casserole that came with along with the wooden handled cradle. We have seen this several times at the flea markets and passed, but we finally caved in because this one came with the cradle. We’re pretty sure there’s bound to be some confusion with the similarly named Horizon Blue pattern which isn’t a promotional (the first time we saw Horizon Blue we DID think it was a promotional) but a standard issue from the 70s.

We also found a nice 401 Primary color blue bowl - these are quite common, but sometimes difficult to find w/ out all the scratches. Another interesting find at the thrift was a lidless 501 clear refrigerator dish. We’ve seen this a number of times at the thrift - it is very interesting that a lot of sellers (and some of the books) say these were only produced early on. We’ve seen some with the newer looking stamps on bottom that definitely do not look like they were produced that long ago - so beware about this on Ebay. I’m not saying that they aren’t that old, just know that it seems like these clear refrigerator dishes were also reproduced by Pyrex much later on. Ours has the older stamp, however.

Finally, we picked up these two nice restaurantware bowls with the Emerald Band (or Green Band) pattern. We think these are #708 sizes, but the bottom of the bowls have the Corning glassblower’s logo instead of the standard Pyrex Tableware stamps.

I’ve always wanted to try and get some photos of my vintage mug collection. Recently, when we “swapped out” a bunch of different Pyrex items in the house for the Fall season, I had a significant amount of the mugs out on the table - so I just decided to take them ALL out and try and see how they would photograph.

It was harder than I thought, and I’m glad I tested it out once. I had many more mugs than I’d originally thought. I’m going to try do something similar once a year - maybe even start up a separate blog for vintage mugs only. The majority of all the mugs here were found for 25 cents to $2. A few were much higher, though.

Below is a shot of only the Pyrex mugs. It is difficult to figure out how to line them all up so that a group photo will show everything.

Here is a closeup photo of just the solid color mugs only - note, this includes many non-Pyrex mugs as well:

Finally, below is a photo of most of the mugs before I actually tried to organize them. I don’t have them in any order in the boxes so it was quite a chore to separate which ones I wanted to photograph. This shot is actually missing about 20-30 mugs - I had thought the table would easily hold the entire collection and it was about the time I took this photo that I realized that was not going to be possible!

I also separated the mugs by maker and color vs. white mugs - you can see more of the mug collection photos on Flickr.

We’ve had these interesting older mugs for quite awhile now, but only got around to posting them now. For one we weren’t too sure about their history - we know the cup on the right is known as a Military Handwarmer Watch Mug and have been dated back to the World War II era when they were created to be used by soldiers and military staff. These are EXTREMELY heavy duty mugs (they have the thickest walls of any Pyrex item I’ve ever seen) and were meant to stand up to everyday use in military kitchens and in the field.

We have seen some conflicting statements that they were actually produced and used in the Korean War as well or even later, but we are not sure about that - or whether it is possible to exactly date them. Like a lot of Corning and Pyrex, it is sometimes possible to get a fix on when an item was FIRST released - however it is another to figure out when an actual piece was made. This is especially problematic because many Pyrex items were in use for decades with little change. One thing we are fairly certain is that later colored opal kitchenware and tableware came about as a direct result of the research done by Corning on glass breakage.

The mug on the left is interesting because it is very similar in shape to a #723 Tableware mug, but it seems to be made in the same fashion as the Handleless Watch Mug. The color is a similar off-white, almost yellowish shade - not as dark as the Watch Mug, but darker than normal. We wonder if perhaps this mug was some sort of interim stage between the release of the #723. It is marked on the bottom with the Corning Glassblower stamp - the same one that is on the Watch Mug.

Interestingly, the handles are slightly different as far as we could tell. Below is a shot of a Blue Band Tableware #723 on the left, and the Corning mug in question on the right. The handle “loop” is slightly different in shape:

It is interesting to compare the wall widths of the mugs. While it is not always possible to date a Pyrex item by the thickness of the glass, it is often a good indication that an item may be a bit older if the glass is thicker. (This is not always true, though)

Here is a example comparison of wall widths. Counterclockwise from the top right: The thickest wall is by far the Handleless Watch Mug. Next thickest is the Interim #723 mug with the Glassblower logo. Finally, quite a bit thinner is a standard diagonal handle Old Town Blue Mug.

We are going to wait to enter the Corning Watch Mug and the #723 style Corning Mug into the reference for the time being. We would like to compare them with a few other items, and perhaps other people might have more information on it. (By the way, there is an advertisement for the Watch Mug in Rogove and Steinhauers Pyrex By Corning book, page 23)

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!