SURPRISE! Bet'cha didn't know these are common:

Decanter #573 A quirky design to be sure but there's quite a few out there.	Tri-lobed bowl #5831 can you believe I've documented over 130 of these?	Decanter #6310 And the most common color for it is Rose.

There is only one firm and easily established rule I apply to determine if something is common; it had to be in production for at least 2 years. But because it's MY rule, when formulating my list of examples I broke it once to make a point about a specific design that is alarmingly common for a one-year design (#5831, above) and yet at the same time always claimed to be rare - or worse, "experimental" (who ARE these people??). The second judgment I make in determining commonness is more subjective; based on extrapolating from known factors that I explain immediately hereafter, it must be reasonable to assume that at least 4,000 examples of a shape were made in order for a design to qualify as common. For common designs I have also personally documented in the vicinity of 100 to 300 examples of each over a 10 year period.

When judging whether an item is common, first and foremost, of course, I rely on my experience, however, the difference between my decade-plus experience (I might ad professional, full-time and obsessive experience) and others', is that I document it. I record every mediocre, good and important design I see and my database includes almost 30,000 items. More concretely, in terms of historical sources, I am also referencing the only documented production records that I am aware exist – I am not completely certain how precise they are and they are sometimes unclear but, regardless, they provide a good reference for several years' production numbers. Finally I am also cross-referencing the above with documentation of the size of the factory in terms of staffing levels, specifically the number of chairs (teams) working each year and more anecdotally also taking into account first person interviews and recollections of production quantities.

Something very important to note regarding numbers; they don't always add up thanks to some mysterious unknown factor (but hey, we still can't explain time so I don't feel so bad). Simply because a given design was in production for five years does not necessarily mean that it is now common – I say this based on my extensive experience even though it runs counter to the documentation. I am not sure why this is the case – to be philosophical; life can be rather random at times. In cross referencing documented numbers in multiple ways for this Newsletter I can tell you that several glaring instances have turned up where the known production run of a given design does not at all correlate with the very few number of examples that I have documented over the past decade (NB: the vast majority DO correlate, so based on this I believe my sampling is accurate and representative). In all immodestly, I seriously doubt anyone else will be in a better position than I am to determine rarity anytime soon, so, other than the simple progress of time revealing new examples, I do not expect the information I am presenting regarding rarity and commonality to change significantly. While I can outline obvious examples and provide substantiation, in some cases, dear reader, you have no better option than to trust my assessment based on my experience - and I like to think I have the credibility to justify asking for your faith in my assessment.

Having established above the basic guidelines for what qualifies as common, I have gone a step further and distinguished between what I am calling just plain "common" (bad) and "iconic" (good). Designs that I have branded as "common" are easily found and distinguished by their simplicity which made them easy to produce and very inexpensive - often as a consequence their design value is quite low. The remainder of the items below I have labeled as "iconic"; these are good and even important designs that were common precisely because the high quality of their aesthetic innovation made them popular. Iconic pieces can have more complex forms and are always less common that the plain old "common" examples.

SURPRISE! (again!); common, yes, but more importantly, ICONIC:

Gump's Decanter	Decanter #658S	Lady Decanter #6525

Given something demonstrably innovative and beautiful, ubiquity can be the ultimate proof of success; think "iPod" or "Lady Gaga." With hand-blown production glass a number of factors come together to make a design so successful as to become iconic. Iconic shapes were expedient to make as well as being aesthetically pleasing, but to consider a design iconic and not just common it must also be a substantially original and innovative design and demonstrate a strong expression of the designer's aesthetic. It is worth noting that the Blenko Glass Company strived to produce such iconic designs; they were inherently production-oriented and at the same time design-driven, they hit the jackpot occasionally when those two stars aligned.

Iconic designs are an ideal entry point for collectors; they represent the strengths of the designer, and they are more accessible both in terms of price and availability. It is particularly important with iconic designs to seek perfectly executed examples in rare or equally iconic colors. For a collector, iconic designs play a key supporting role in a collection both historically and aesthetically. In fact, in Newsletter No.4, Showing Off, I explain how successful groupings often require simpler forms to act as a foil for more complex ones – this is an excellent role for an iconic design for all level of collectors.

The best & most popular ICONIC designs of each designer:

Winslow Anderson: Oversized teardrop decanter #920L	Wayne Husted: the so-called "shot glass decanter" #6027	Joel Philip Myers: Elongated bottle #6427

What is good for a collector, however, is not always good for a dealer; you will note that only a small portion of my inventory consists of iconic designs and I almost never have common designs. In fact, on this point my website can easily confuse novice collectors; I specialize in great rare designs and carry them as my bread-and-butter - yet I avoid common ones. So my site can be a bit like a funhouse mirror; rare things look common (because that's all I have) and common things look rare (because I never have them). But for context one need only look at what other dealers and offering; mostly common stuff, and usually because they don't know the difference.

I've spent a great deal of time analyzing and understanding the glass of both Empoli and Blenko, but an interesting result of writing this Newsletter is that it has really driven home for me the fact that there are significant and complex differences between the work of the first designer, Winslow Anderson, and all those who followed. Anderson had a steeper learning curve as the first designer; not only did he have to replace the entire pre-designer line, he was also testing new waters and building a new market. Anderson produced fewer new designs per year than later designers. Anderson sought and prized designs that would be widely accessible and, as a true modernist, practical to make. There are very few indulgent designs in Anderson's tenure.

Anderson's designs overall tended to be simpler, timeless and truly functional, all the while being quintessentially modern and thoroughly original. Perhaps as a result of this, proportionally more of Anderson's designs went into long-term and high volume production than any other designer's work. From that perspective he was the most successful of the designers (and the most profitable for the company), however, it also makes the secondary market for his work more challenging because from his smaller pool of designs, many are comparatively common. The flip side is that his more adventurous designs tend to be much rarer than any other designer's. There are two designs of Anderson's, for example, that I have never seen, much less owned - and would dearly love to. So the common versus iconic dichotomy is not as useful in considering Anderson's work – while rarity surely greatly increases the value of his rare pieces (more so than other designers) I'd suggest that commonness is less relevant. I hesitate to apply the same standard of commonness to his work and have therefore slightly loosened the standards when applied to his designs.

A different dynamic comes into play in considering the commonness of Wayne Husted's designs; as a prolific designer there is a big, soft middle ground of good but unexceptional designs that were quite commercially successful. Some of these are just on the cusp of being overtly common, but also shy of being iconic as they simply don't have the design chops to quite fill those big shoes. In such cases I have listed the designs with an asterix when I included them, but for the most part I left them out. The prevalence of common Husted designs is partly a result of the fact that the company's production peaked in terms of volume in the middle of Husted's tenure, therefore a greater number of his designs were produced in somewhat larger numbers. An interesting point on Husted's work; collectors tend to latch on to his name and work first. While I suspect part of this is the result of his accessibility as a person (making him easy to promote compared to the very prickly Joel Myers), it is even more so the result of him having produced the largest number of designs. Also, in terms of both variety and volume, the available quantity of his work drowns out the other designers. Of course the brilliance and originality of his designs helps too!

With the work of Joel Myers it seems that, generally speaking, his common designs did not reach the same high levels of production that the previous two designers' work did. Essentially, across the board, Myer's work is rarer. A statistical skewing of the data may be to blame for this simply because his work is, on average, a decade more recent compared to the other designers, a decade's worth of inventory has yet to hit the secondary market. However, I do not think that explanation can account for the bulk of the difference and even taking it into consideration, it is fair to say that Myers' work was generally produced in smaller numbers such that his common pieces are nowhere near as close to how common Anderson and Husted's are.

In assessing the commonness and rarity of designs by John Nickerson, caution needs to be exercised; at this point in time I do believe it is relevant to consider that as the work is more than two decades more recent than Anderson's. Comparatively much has not yet come onto the secondary market. This is likely exacerbated by the fact that his aesthetic was perhaps the simplest of all the designers' and much of his work requires an educated eye to identify – it does not jump out and announce it's presence like the crazy sculptural forms of Wayne Husted for instance. He also had among the smallest number of new designs produced. Therefore any indications I give for commonness of Nickerson designs is particularly tentative and I have hardly listed any.

Putting numbers to the above assessments of each designer's tenure, each year Anderson redesigned 13% of the line on average (introducing 172 new designs in his tenure, 18 of which were in production for only 1 year), Husted 32% (520 new designs, 255 lasted only one year), Myers 35% (403 new designs, 150 of which lasted only one year) and Nickerson 26% (210 new designs, 80 of which lasted only one year). Note that in 1960 the volume of items produced was cut almost in half and never again returned to full levels.

When formulating my list below, I did NOT consider the following categories of items because I don't think they are generally worth considering - with too few exceptions the vast majority of these items are wildly common and made in huge numbers: barware, pitchers, cast (not blown) items, and miniatures. To be honest I also didn't bother listing a number of very common but super-simple and utilitarian looking forms, it just didn't seem helpful as they already have the design-related stigma of being irrelevant aesthetically.

Actually, if you don't mind I'm going to repeat myself, again, because this has not seem to sunk in for some people despite the fact that I have written it about half a dozen times; Barware, most pitchers, ashtrays, miniatures and all cast items (many bowls, bookends, wall hangings, and especially ashtrays, etc) are very, very common and are of little or no value or significance to an increasingly sophisticated collector market. One need look only at other famous glass makers to see that this is true universally; Tiffany Aurene glasses for instance are dirt cheap compared to vases.

One last note: the list below contains 70 designs and I was conservative in my assessment. So be advised that there are a number of other designs that are quite common. It was actually very challenging to come up with the list below, I did not want to unduly stigmatize any design, but ultimately I believe the examples provided are not only the most relevant examples but also the most instructive for the benefit of collectors.

For a design to be iconic it must be substantially original, innovative and demonstrate a strong expression of the designer's aesthetic. Iconic designs were expedient to make and often moderately priced so sold well when first introduced, as such they are now relatively common. These important designs are "common" precisely because the high quality of their aesthetic innovation made them popular. Iconic pieces can have more complex forms and are always less common that the plain old "common" examples. While these are good to own, buy only perfect examples (see Newsletter No. 12) and then only in rare or great colors.

Like sand in a desert. Typically these are functional-looking, simple and often uninteresting designs that were quite cheap originally. To be common a design had to be in production for at least 2 years (I made one exception to this rule, #5831). The second criterion is that, based on factors discussed above, it must be reasonable to assume that at least 4,000 examples were made. Finally, for common designs I must have personally documented in the vicinity of 100 to 300 examples of each over a 10 year period. I recommend avoiding these designs.

Items marked with an asterix (*) indicate they are just on the cusp of being as common as other designs listed but also not quite good enough to be iconic.

Damon Crain

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