We’ve come across a few interesting promotional casseroles lately. Well, I guess to call them finds is a bit of a stretch, since the two bigger ones are Ebay items. It’s just so difficult to find these casseroles with their original cradles which is something we’ve been coveting lately.

First up is a standard 943 promo yellowish-tan casserole that doesn’t have an official name (yet) but is commonly called “Weave”. We’ve been contemplating a name for that one, mostly because “weave” is a bit ambiguous. Wicker or Geometric Weave or Basket Weave might be better. It came with a nice wooden handle cradle that has a candle warmer on the bottom.

Next is a larger 945 promo casserole that’s been on our list of items to pick up. Again, there’s no official name, but the orange and pink designs on the front sort of look like Rosettes, so we’re thinking of a name along those lines for the reference. This also came with a wooden handled candle warmer cradle, also from Ebay.

Last up is an interesting little JAJ Crown Pyrex mini-casserole. We’re not sure of the name of this one (Checkers?) but it was found at the Salvation Army the other day. Very unusual to find these English pieces in California. We’ve been meaning to start up a little section on JAJ one of these days but just haven’t gotten around to it. The pattern features highly stylized green and blue rose blooms - very interesting.

A little companion post of latest finds to match the earlier Blue pyrex haul. Clockwise from top left… a nice Snowflake Blue oval casserole grabbed at a garage sale. Next to that one is a Corning Cornflower Blue 6 cup tea kettle w/ Bakelite (?) lid. We know it’s not Pyrex but it was only a dollar at a church sale.

The bottom two bowls were a steal at the Goodwill, both for 99 cents. First is the unofficially named Golden Grapes pattern on a small 441 cinderella Delphite bowl. Interestingly, this is the smaller bowl in a chip and dip set that also included a large 4 quart #444 bowl with a cradle. Unfortunately, only we found only the small bowl… wonder where the large one went? Next to that one is a lidless Horizon Blue 472 1.5 pint Bake-Serve Store casserole. We do have other examples of Horizon Blue but just haven’t had time yet to input them into the reference.

Here’s a decent selection of brown and beige vintage kitchen items found over the past month or so. You’ll definitely recognize the Woodland Brown bowls - interestingly we found the two sizes that were the same color which is a lighter beige. These are the 404 and 402 bowls - as you know the other two are darker brown in color.

We also picked up this very nice “Spices” Promotional Pyrex casserole which is interesting because the color is almost identical to the reddish-beige of the Woodland Brown pattern. This one is easily identifiable because it says “Spices” in script on the side. We also believe this one to be a newer item because it has capacity on the bottom in metric.

On top of that casserole is a 401 pint Homestead mixing bowl that we picked up at a church sale for a mere 50 cents. Homestead has a speckled beige background along with a navy blue pattern that is often mistaken for Pfaltzgraff.

Lastly, the mug featured is a Brown fired on Glasbake cup that was scooped up for a quarter. And the dark brown to black bowls in the front are actually Fire King… we actually found 7 of these in one shot at the Goodwill for $4 total!

Continuing the summer theme, here are a few recent Pyrex Carafes that we found. All of these originally came with plastic lids, but none of the ones we found had lids. Some nice variety - we’re not sure why carafes seemed to be everywhere recently. The one with green and yellow flowers looks sort of like Spring Blossom, but the larger yellow flowers don’t look like the pattern and we have seen a carafe before that has the real pattern on it. Hm… maybe we’ll call it pseudo-Spring Blossom - or not!

The second carafe has a sunburst type of pattern on it and the shape of the carafe almost looks like an erlenmeyer flask. The third one has orange and lemon slices on it, and we think this is a slightly more modern piece, because it has capacity of both quarts and litres on it.

It’s pretty difficult to take good pics of clear pyrex items without too much reflection, especially when you have multiple items. That’s the reason for the black background instead of our usual dotty fabric.

Is there a cure for the summertime blues? Sure there is - it’s Pyrex! We found several great items at the latest flea market we attended. One of our best finds was the casserole in the front, which is a Promotional Decorator Casserole with a lovely turquoise pattern called Meadow. Although it came without a lid or the cradle, it was a steal at 4 bucks. One note: if you are going to try and sell Pyrex, you owe it to yourself to at least wash the item with some soapy water and a sponge. This piece was almost completely covered in brown/black dust which came off easily - I think it would have been more like 6-8 bucks if the seller would have just washed it.

On that same note, we found that smaller Butterprint Bake-Serve-Store #472 1.5 pint dish without lid in the back that seemed thrashed, but it turned out quite nice after using a little Magic Eraser. $2.

Lastly, this Snowflake Blue mixing bowl came into our possession for $2.50. While it’s not the rarest pattern, it seems that of all the more common and modern of the “vintage” patterns (for instance: Butterfly Gold, Spring Blossom, Autumn Harvest, Old Town) Snowflake Blue seems to be the one that is most in demand. We haven’t been collecting this series really, but now we might have to! =)

We were hoping that someone might be able to comment on this little mystery we discovered the other day. Because our Pyrex is increasing exponentially, there are times when we accidentally pick up more than one of the same item without even knowing it! In this case, we had thought we needed this Spring Blossom Green 503 1.5 quart refrigerator dish, but in fact we had one already! What we usually do in that case is try to sell our extra one.

But when we lined up the two in order to try decide which one to keep, we got a little surprise - the pattern on the two identical dishes are slightly different!

As you know, Spring Blossom has another distinct “pattern”. However, neither of the patterns on our two refrigerator dishes look like that one. These two patterns just appear to be very slight variations of each other. One pattern (the one on top) appears to be printed “larger” than the other. When will the Spring Blossom pattern variation madness end?!

The pattern is the same on both sides of each refrigerator dish. If you have any information about why they are different, or if you’d just like to chime in on which one you have, please leave a comment.

And another quickie: we caved in and purchased a Pyrex New Dots Green Bowl through Ebay the other day. This completes our New Dots bowl set (full picture of the set should be coming soon). We’re a bit embarrassed on how much we paid - this is clearly the most we’ve ever paid for a single piece of Pyrex. And it’s not like it’s supremely rare, although you’ll remember that this 404 4 quart bowl was sold separately from the 3 bow New Dots set which makes it less common. It’s just that we (and a lot of other people) really, really, really wanted it - uh, darn you Ebay making it so easy to buy things online…

Quickie post: we “completed” our Primary Color Refrigerator Set today with the acquisition of a Yellow 503 1.5 quart dish with lid. We were just having a hard time coughing up the $15-20 sellers were asking. Ours was $7.50 at the swap meet…

Some more backlogged pictures of our earlier finds are coming up. Actually, the only piece that’s Pyrex in this shot is this Golden Branch Promotional Casserole. This is another one of those casseroles that were labeled “Hospitality”, to the confusion of Pyrex collectors everywhere. The pattern is quite nice, however, featuring a golden branch with blossoms on it. Interesting that this one is a “round” casserole (#024) with the bottom not being flat as is the case with most promo casseroles we find. This one was 3 bucks at an estate sale.

Next up is a Glasbake grey fired-on soup or chili bowl. Several companies made small bowls in this style with a thin handle with a round knob - most notably Fire King. We couldn’t pass it up at a dollar.

Lastly, are two Fire King “Kimberly” mugs in orange and green. These mugs are interesting - many people either completely hate them or completely love them. They are very distinctive having an outward embossed diamond pattern on them which makes them easy to grip while washing. However, dirt tends to get in between the little bumps, which is fine unless you have to wash off the collected grime of several generations off as I did after finding these cups at the Salvation army. We actually got 4, at 89 cents a piece.

Okay, so these aren’t *that* elusive or super-rare, but not too many people have heard of or seen “black Pyrex” and we are thrilled to add these to our collection. This pattern is commonly known on eBay as Black Snowflake, but our trusty reference guides classify these as White on “Charcoal.” The fired-on charcoal/black color is really interesting - more of a matte coating rather than the shiny color we’re so used to seeing in colored Pyrex, definitely something we’ve never seen before. And this set still had its original aluminum lids in great condition!

To read more about the Black Snowflake pattern, check out the pattern guide.