Chris Renaudo's Crown Embossed Brookfield (CREB's) beehives won the NIA's award for best exhibit of a specialty collection. Chris' display also won the Kevin Lawless Memorial Award for the "Best Exhibit Using Eastern Insulators" presented by the Capital Region Bottle & Insulator Club. And it won the Central Florida Insulator Club's award for "Best First Time Exhibit at a National Show".

Chris notes that the CREB's are embossed with numbers or letters representing a shop of four workers that produced the insulators. He says CD 145's can be found with shop numbers 00 through 23, and letters A & B. Within these 26 shop numbers and letters are over 130 mold variations. That combination creates a lot of collecting challenges for the specialty collector. In a few cases, as few as three examples of a particular shop number / mold style may be known to exist. Above, the yellow green beehive contains the embossing error "FAB" instead of "FEB" (for February). The insulator to the right of it is an unusual gray green color. The two below contain great milky swirls. We'll feature Chris' presentation of CREB's in a future article later this fall.