c1890 Mt Washington Crown Milano American art glass vase. 8" tall with no cracks, chips, or restorations, and nearly no wear to enamel/gold. Amazing square shaped vase continuously decorated throughout. tw273 MT. WASHINGTON AND PAIRPOINT GLASS Mt. Washington and its successor, the Pairpoint Corporation, was one of America’s longest-running luxury glass companies (1837-1957), one that rivaled its better known contemporaries, Tiffany and Steuben. It constantly reinvented and re-invigorated its business through creativity in texture, decoration, pattern, and color - developing a variety of styles and decorating techniques which were so technically complex that few are even practiced today. The Mt. Washington Glass Company was founded in South Boston in 1837, and moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1870. In 1880, Thomas J. Pairpoint, an English silversmith, was hired to run the Pairpoint Manufacturing Company, another company in New Bedford which Mt. Washington’s owners established to produce ornate silver-plated mounts for Mt. Washington glass. In 1894, the Pairpoint Manufacturing Company absorbed Mt. Washington, and the company was renamed the Pairpoint Corporation in 1900, which remained the company’s name until it went out of business in 1938. It was revived briefly as the Gundersen-Pairpoint Glass Company but closed permanently in 1957. The company’s most successful years were from 1880 (in the height of the opulent Gilded Age) to 1930 (the end of the exuberant Roaring Twenties). MT. WASHINGTON ART GLASS AND CUT GLASS Englishman Frederick Shirley was hired in 1872 to run Mt. Washington’s chandelier department, and two years later was put in charge of the entire company. Shirley was entrepreneurial and litigious, quick to adopt new designs and quick to complain if he thought any other firm was copying his wares. By the time he resigned in 1891, he had amassed a total of 27 patents and five design patents for various types of glass, most of which were quite successful. In 1885, Shirley introduced Burmese glass, a translucent glass that shaded from yellow to pink, which was highly decorated in the elegant and sophisticated style characteristic of the day. It became an immediate success on the Art Glass market. Shirley was a good businessman and took advantage of the dawning age of advertising to promote Burmese glass extensively. Mt. Washington’s large decorating shop specialized in enameling. The decorators who worked on Burmese glass also applied their skills to a variety of other decorated glasses with exotic names like Royal Flemish, Crown Milano, Colonial, and Pearl Satin Ware. By 1890, the company was advertising itself as “Headquarters in America for Art Glass Wares.”___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Thank you for your consideration, our two main goals here are to make every customer happy and prevent returns. We work really hard to show size, condition, weight, and accurately describe our items mostly through our photos. Please look at them. We are extremely picky about what enters our inventory, if it's a contemporary item it will be in like new condition. Older items like Native American jewelry that has been worn for 50+ years is expected to have wear which is considered desirable to most collectors. Fine porcelain, glass will likely be mint unless I describe otherwise. Items deemed fancy I would never offer unless in near mint condition, utilitarian pieces are expected to have wear. We put a lot of effort into curating our inventory, so really cannot typically discount single item purchases. There are so many costs associated with Ebay and when we price it's for our website without factoring in those costs. We do not mark our items up with the intention of marking them down to the first person who comes along and shows interest.
I ask you to please realize how destructive returns are to small businesses. It often takes us a very large amount of time to locate sold items, prepare for shipment, etc. That time could be put to better use like taking our kid to the park!!! So if you are the type of person who is considering a return before you have even bought this item, or who returns more than 10% of what you buy I ask that you please consider doing this to someone besides me. We lose way more than shipping both ways on a return, with the time involved it's closer to $50 average loss off each return. Also I cannot count how many times I've deleted my "out of stock" items on the Estate Fresh Austin website as a courtesy to my wholesale customers only to later have the item returned, now we have to rephotograph and list the item all over again. This is a really big deal, I realize eBay tends to encourage returns as they just want the commission and don't care about their sellers working at a negative value. So just because I am offering returns does not mean I encourage them, they should be used as absolute last resort. I tend to do repeat business outside of Ebay, for years and years I deal with people and they never return. It is always a first time customer which makes it that much more horrible as I cannot look at the loss as something that averages out, it's just a stand alone loss. If you read this far I am extremely grateful for your time and thoughtfulness, if you reach out to me and I don't answer or don't seem attentive enough then please reach out again or directly through the website. Thanks so much!!!! Ian