Blast from the Past

Educational Series on Stemmed Pieces:

Northwood Flute Sherbets

by John and Lucile Britt

This Blast from the Past is from a series of articles that John and Lucile Britt wrote for “The Carnival Pump“. This article appeared in the September 1988 issue. He refers to their favorite Northwood Flute sherbets, which were pictured in black and white. Full color printing for “The Carnival Pump” has been only a recent luxury, so please use your imagination when he tells about their favorite colors. I’ve used color photos to illustrate the pattern.

 The “N. Flute” sherbets make an interesting and very pretty collection because they come in such a wide variety of colors. Our favorites are shown below in blue opaque, vaseline, and olive green. The blue opaque color, shown on the left, looks somewhat like blue milk glass with super iridescence. I have seen only a very few of these sherbets in that color. The vaseline example is in the center. Like the vaseline Northwood bushel basket, it is very rare. In fact, even though I know others do exist, this is the only vaseline “Northwood’s Flute” sherbet that we have ever seen. On the right is the one in olive green or sometimes called russet color. This color is rather hard to locate. You see the sherbet in marigold quite often. Other colors found in this piece are green, celeste blue, and amethyst. We also have one in celeste blue that is decorated with gold trim. It is quite possible that other colors exist in these sherbets including dark purple, pastel green, and cobalt blue, but we have not seen any of them in those colors.

Above, in John Britt’s black and white photo, he had photographed his blue opaque sherbet, his vaseline sherbet, and his russet or olive-green sherbet. 

These little sherbets are 3 1/2 inches tall with a top opening of almost 4 inches. The base has a diameter of 2 3/4 inches. The inside is perfectly smooth with an underlined “N” in the center. The trademark on this piece does not contain the circle around the “N”. The outside of the sherbet contains nine panels that extend from about 1/2 inch from the top on down the stem and out to the outside edge of the base. Northwood also made a much smaller piece in this pattern that is called a salt dip or nut cup. They too are very cute little pieces and make super additions to any miniature collection.

Pictured to the left is the traditional Northwood Flute sherbet in a nice amethyst color.    Shown to the right are the sherbet and the nut dish that John referred to in his article. The nut cup has been flattened a bit. Are there any nut cups that have the sides straight up?

The sherbets were also made and ruffled when the glass was still molten enough to shape. To the left you see green and marigold that have six ruffles each. The photo on the right shows the ruffled sherbets from a top view. As you can see, the ruffled marigold sherbet was flared flatter than the green.                                                                                          

This article appeared in the ICGA Pump in the September 2018 issue and is reprinted with permission.