The Rainbow Art Glass Company: The Early Years from Decorating Company to Glass Manufacturer. This is Monograph No. 64 in the glass study series of the West Virginia Museum of American Glass, Ltd. Includes a brief history of the early years of this popular Huntington, West Virginia, company, beginning in 1947. Initially the firm acted as a decorating company, offering hand painted decorations, stains, and other treatments on blanks made by Fenton, Paden City, the United States Glass Company, Indiana, and many others. Soon some hand blown pieces were added to the line and by the early 1960s, Rainbow turned to the manufacture of glassware exclusively. This monograph, heavily illustrated with advertisements and original catalog materials, investigates this transitional period in detail, illuminating a previously unknown aspect of Rainbow's history. Written & compiled by Tom Felt.

37 pages, fully illustrated. 

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This small work is a part of a much larger project to place glass information not in archival storage boxes but in the hands of students, collectors, and dealers in glass. Only by sharing can we make the necessary leaps in learning, as we all bring some piece of the puzzle. The West Virginia Museum of American Glass (WVMAG), a non-profit organization, is committed to sharing glass information and from that conviction this Monograph Series was born.

The WVMAG monographs address glass topics that yet lack the wide interest to make publishing a book commercially successful or that we do not yet know enough to commit to the more permanent form of a book. WVMAG's photocopied monographs are endeavors in seed planting by providing information on topics that may not have been previously readily available that other researchers can draw upon in formulating their own work.

Museum members are entitled to a $4.00 discount on one copy of this title.  If you are a member, please send us a message through eBay once you have paid for your order and we will credit the discount back to you.

If you are not a member, please consider joining.  The work of MAGWV is possible ONLY with the support and participation of people like you. Whether your interest is as a collector, student of history, descendent of a glass working family, or general interest in the preservation of our past, MAGWV has something to offer you and needs your support!

About the Museum of American Glass (MAGWV)

MAGWV is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt not-for-profit organization located in Weston, WV.  Our mission is to share the diverse and rich heritage of glass as a product and historical object as well as telling of the lives of glass workers, their families and communities, and of the tools and machines they used in glass houses.

The Museum contains representative samples of glass products as widely varied as pressed and blown tableware, art glass, bottles, marbles, insulators, automotive glass, glass eyeballs, and much more.  There is also equipment and tools which were used in glassmaking.  We preserve the history of the places and people who made these products. 

The Museum examines the rich history of some of America's most famous glass factories, while carefully understanding the impact that the hundreds of smaller and oftentimes forgotten glass houses made on the history of the glass industry.

MAGWV displays many of the diverse and beautiful objects produced by factories during the past century, attempting to compare and contrast similar pieces produced by once competing companies.  No other public collection offers such contrasts on a large scale.