2001 >> September >> Editors Pick  

Editor's Pick

Reprinted from "Crown Jewels of the Wire", September 2001, page 48

Wouldn't you have had a difficult time choosing the winners of the displays? However, the display that held the theme of the show was one that was not a winner, except in the exceptional glass and history shared about the glass from the southern states. Congrats, Jim Meyer.


Three CD 121 toll insulators: AM. TEL. & TEL CO. bubbly and crude green; BROOKFIELD with sharp drip points in amber; C.D. & P.T.Co. in yellow olive green.


CD 126.3 BROOKFIELD in gray with blue and lavender tones was found on the Central Georgia along with two CD 126 Brookfields purples.


CD 126 RD 149959 in a jade green milkglass.


An early threaded telegraph insulator was represented by two fantastic CD 127 Brookfields. The one on the left is a yellow green, and look at the road of amber ribbon running in the blue aqua item on the right.


A number of spectacular Brookfield pieces were found in the south, including these two CD 133s -- the yellow green and its companion, a piece that was found in south Georgia, in a deep purple color. . .


. . . and a very dark purple CD 145 Brookfield beehive.


Many of the peacock blue CD 134 PATENT/DEC 19 1871 are weakly embossed, however that is not the case with this piece found on the same crossarm with two others close to Birmingham, Alabama on a railroad line.


Two purple B.G.M. CO. signals in purple -- CD 134 and CD 164.


An olive green CD 187 and a green CD 188.


Cover Photo

The Hemingray 19 in cobalt blue is the only one ever found in the South, that I know of. (See next to bottom row just left of center in photograph of display front cover.) It was found on a large government installation. The man who found it was there on business and he stated that he walked over to where one of the poles had been and the insulators were lying on the ground. He brought home the cob and several aquas and said he didn't look where any of the other poles had been. The only reason he brought home the cobalt was because his wife loved the color blue.


CD 158 Boston Bottle Works in green at the left and two CD 158.2 Bostons, one in blue and the other in green.


CD 736.4 in a nice green and a...


CD 737 in light aqua which was dug behind the telegraph station in Blakely, Alabama.

Several interesting threaded insulators found in the south were a CD 164 Hemingray in orange amber in the railroad yard in Grenada, Mississippi; a CD 145 H.G.Co. in yellow green in Mississippi; an aqua Cutter tree insulators in a tree at a river crossing in north Florida; a yellow olive CD 145 American and a CD 106.1 Duquesne in cornflower in South Carolina; a CD 127 Homer Brookes in aqua along the Georgia Railroad.


Joining the CD 737 Lefferts and the...


CD 1000 block found in the south are some threadless pieces: a teal CD 731 Tillotson on an old building in New Orleans; Yandell's Patent (CD 1014) in milky green near Lake Pontchartrain; a CD 701.5 in teal with original pin at a Florida river crossing; CD 740 in blackglass in Florida; an a teapot in apple lime-green behind the Blakely, Alabama telegraph station.

Of course the stories behind the "teapots", the Richmond dig and the Confederate "eggs", and the addition of the elusive CD 158.9 screwtop Boston Bottle Works in amber were the headliners in Jim's display.


Above is a beautiful teapot that passes enough light to see aqua along the edge of the spout. Below is an transparent aqua egg and the cover cobalt egg on its side to show you the brilliance of its color.

In the middle of the third row (see cover) you find the amber CD 158.9 flanked by two in aqua. Notice how dark the amber piece is; however, turn it on its side .... ya'll have never seen a more gorgeous piece of glass found in the south.

Congratulations, Jim, on a marvelous representation of southern glass and the history that you shared on each piece.



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