Antiquing with Your Best Friend – Aurene and Fostoria Glass

Yesterday my friend Loren and I went to the Ann Arbor antiques fair.  We found some interesting things!

I always look for Fostoria, Cambridge and depression glass, plus I love Art Deco, vintage table linens and beautiful paintings.  My friend likes older furniture and just neat things.  Let’s see what we found.

I checked out two Art Deco lamps, and like a silly didn’t get photos of either one.  One was a small statuette with a green and red glass screen in front of a small light bulb.  I liked it until the seller turned it on, then it looked too garish with the vivid red and dark green.

The other lamp was black and white table top touchier style, very neat.  The base had a lot of corrosion, a little concerning if you want to leave it on in the evening.  We left both lamps behind.

There were some nice original paintings, including one I loved that reminded me of our back yard, if our yard had lots of trees and sheep.  I would have gotten that in a second except it cost $2000.  There were a couple others I liked, but nothing that made an unbeatable case to come live with us and adorn our walls.

Moving to glass, we found these Aurene comports.  These were about 3 inches tall and 4 inches wide and the pair was $1200.  The tag didn’t indicate the maker and I wasn’t about to pick them up to look for a signature.

This particular booth had several high end pieces, including a set of four Aurene shades.  Here is an interesting article about Aurene glass.   The main companies who made this are an illustrious set, Tiffany, Steuben and Loetz.  Apparently Tiffany sued Stueben although researchers believe both companies developed their own process.

Aurene glass is spectacular.  It is a rich, soft golden color with iridescence and the stretch glass feathered colors at the edges.  It truly is gorgeous stuff.  Nonetheless, I left the comports there.

This same booth had this neat Fostoria line 2433 piece.  This design always reminds me of the movie Men In Black as it looks futuristic and outer space-ish.  The seller must have felt this was a low end piece as she priced it at $50.

You can see a couple cut crystal decanters to the side in this first picture.  I wanted you to see how she had this displayed, even though it was clearly a secondary piece in her booth.  This next photo shows it better.

The bowl is crystal and the tripod base is a rich green.  Fostoria made only a few pieces in this pattern, two sizes of footed bowls, comports and candle holders.  This one is the larger bowl, quite a showy piece about 12 inches high.  She had it marked $50, a realistic price for this in green.

The color doesn’t show well because the lighting wasn’t great.  Even booths like this that had spot lights had a hard time competing against the dark ceilings and yellow overhead lights in the fairgrounds buildings.

I will show you some more pictures in the next few posts.  It was a fun way to spend the day, antiquing with a good friend!