When we were in Ohio in June, the menfolk in Dave’s family spent a day golfing at their annual tournament (the winner receives a trophy depicting a golfer and a toilet and is expected to display it proudly). During the golf tournament, I tagged along with the ladies for a trip to the Tiffin Glass Museum.
The Museum displays vintage pieces in one room and items for sale in a small adjacent room. Luckily for my wallet, the pieces I liked most were all in the “not for sale” part of the Museum. Tiffin Glass was one of the producers of color-changing “Neodymium glass,” which they unfortunately called “twilight,” even though it has nothing to do with 100-year old vampires living as teenagers. Twilight glass changes color under different light. The museum docent demonstrated that twilight glass looks lavender under incandescent light and ice blue under fluorescent light. He told us people used to buy it thinking it was blue because most stores use fluorescent light and then be upset when they got their piece home and found it to be lavender.
But there was another, even cooler, dual-colored glass there. Vaseline glass looks yellow normally, but turns neon green under black light because it contains uranium. Although my sister-in-law was disappointed to find out that the vaseline glass salt cellars she wanted to buy weren’t actually made by Tiffin Glass, she decided to get two anyway.
In the car on the way home she read the tag on the glass and said that the manufacturer (Mosser Glass) was located in Cambridge, Ohio.
“That’s where Chuck came from!” I exclaimed.
“Well, then you should definitely have one of these,” my sister-in-law generously offered.
So that was really nice of her. I really should have just bought a piece of this glass myself, since I was so impressed with it. I was just stymied by the black light part. But I got a cheap little handheld black light and here are the photographic results!
Just my Canon Speedlite flash:
Under black light:
That’s SO cool! I’m totally fascinated by different types of glass… might have to find myself some Vaseline glass! Gorgeous shots, too!
Thanks, Lizz! It was a fun challenge to get a good shot in the dark with black light.
My parents collected glass for decades and Mom has a number of pieces of vaseline glass. She never realized what she had was vaseline, though, until a prospective buyer came to her home recently with a black light and shined it on the green glass in Mom’s display cabinets.
It would be great to have more pieces, I think that would make for interesting pictures! I enjoyed learning more about glass making–I hadn’t known there was glass that changed colors.
Oooooooh, pretty!!!! So neat!
Thanks, Aimee! I really had fun taking shots of this.