Treasure Box Wednesday: New Year, New Thrifty Discoveries

With the winds died down, the snow in more gentle spurts and a big case of cabin fever, I finally got the chance to hit some thrift store in a mini-adventure with my eager, ever-thrifty father.

One of my very favorite items of the weekend has a rather funny story with it. 
My buddy Scoobie has a friend who is a glass fanatic like myself, and she goes to estate sales and thrifts in search of her treasures. One of which, she passed along to me through Scoobie, as the piece just didn't quite go with her stuff. It's an opalescent pressed glass plate in the "American Sweetheart" pattern, done from 1930-1936 by the MacBeth-Evans Glass Company.

Given my love of opalescent glass, I was absolutely delighted.

Then I went to a Goodwill in Irwin on Sunday and saw, in their case, its twin! It was marked $2.50, but they were having a 50% off sale. So my collection doubled in the course of a day.

The cute little unmarked vase below came from Antiques & Uniques of Bellevue. They had gotten in someone's collection of McCoy, Hager and other potteries, and I couldn't resist this piece with its art nouveau tulip pattern...
It had a few issues around the rim, but the overall design was too lovely for me to pass up.

Then there was my last and most surprising find of the weekend. This was at the Goodwill Outlet in North Versailles, parked in one of their giant bins...
I recognized it as being fairly old pottery, with that matte finish organic feel found in some of my favorite McCoy pieces. It turns out this is likely an unmarked Brush Pottery piece, from the early 1900s. 

Brush Pottery was affiliated and eventually bought by McCoy Pottery. It ceased production around 1908 due to a fire which wiped out its facilities.

And yes, those are little mushrooms and wood knots on the side of the piece.

Anyway, that marks my treasures for this week's Treasure Box Wednesday. I know I've only been posting once a week, and that's because where normally I'd have used Sunday for a second post, my dad now lives in the city, and I've been spending the day on adventures with him.

I hope to figure out a new posting schedule soon so I can get back to two posts a week. I'll let you all know once I sort it out.

OH! And one last kinda of fun thing I wanted to remember to share, even if it is a little bit off-topic... 

I just learned a short story of mine has officially been included in the Lewis Carroll Society of North America's magazine, The Knight Letter. It's a little humor piece called "Lewis Carroll Tests Out Jabberwocky." I have it online here on my humor blog, where it was published originally, if you have a moment and would like to read it.

Hope you all have a great (and non-slippy-and-slidey) week.

Treasure Box Wednesday: Brushing Up on Brush McCoy Pottery

There were just two things in the Treasure Box for this week-- one of which I shared with you good folks on Sunday.

The other was a vase that had caught my eye several weeks ago, in a McCoy display at the We Miss Back When antique mall in Apollo, PA. The color and shape were absolutely my taste. Regular readers probably know by now my love of these organic-looking art pottery pieces in cool pastels. And this one seemed so finely-done.

The mark on the bottom of the vase said "Brush Company." And because I had already selected a more inexpensive, small McCoy piece from the mall, I ended up passing on the vase. Budget just wouldn't allow.

It was this week, I was in the area and finally made the purchase for my collection. (And on sale, no less!)
Interestingly, the vase does seem to be a part of the McCoy company's lengthy history. The company had many names, many mergers and many smaller companies branching from it since the turn-of-the-1900s, and the Brush Company was one of those early iterations.

If the vase is truly from the Brush Company itself-- and not a part of the later merger called "Brush-McCoy"-- then the vase had a very small window of opportunity for production.

According to my Collector's Encyclopedia of McCoy Pottery, the Brush Pottery company was a one-kiln operation in the Putman section of Zanesville, Ohio in 1907, started by one of the later general managers of McCoy pottery, George S. Brush. Due to a fire, the Brush Pottery only existed from 1907-1908.

Brush-McCoy began in 1911.
So I still need to verify the mark on the bottom of the vase to determine if it's really just Brush Pottery or not, but either way, it's probably a pretty old piece.

No matter-- the point, as with anything a person collects-- is that I love it. The smooth, creamy matte finish... The leafy, feathery shape... It sits with McCoy cousins in its color palette as a central focal point like it's always lived there.

And I was wondering-- do you folks collect anything that you've had to do some research on?