Fenton’s Grape and Cable Sauce
By Carl and Eunice Booker
Sometimes it doesn’t take too much to get me excited about a piece of carnival glass. What appears to be something that is quite common turns out to be something that isn’t seen too often. When I saw this small sauce/berry dish at a recent Wroda auction, I became curious as it looked to be something a bit different. It turned out to be the small sauce dish that would accompany the larger fruit bowl in the Fenton Grape and Cable with Persian Medallion interior pattern.
While I have seen several of the large fruit bowls, I didn’t remember seeing one of the smaller sauce dishes. There is a lot of pattern covering this small dish. The Persian Medallion pattern covers the interior while the Grape and Cable pattern covers the exterior. The coloring is quite nice on both the interior and exterior. It is ruffled & footed.
As it turned out there weren’t too many people at the auction who seemed to be excited over the piece, so I got it for a good price. As the saying goes, “Different strokes for different folks.” That’s okay with me, as I like sauce dishes, and this is one that I didn’t have. While I have no desire to put a full set of these pieces together, I’m just happy to have another sauce to add to my sauce dish collection. I only know of one other collector who collected sauce or small berry dishes. Unfortunately, he is no longer with us. (RIP Garth Erby.) He did give a seminar on these pieces many years ago. Again, I was not fortunate to be able to attend that presentation.
My small sauce and berry dish collection is the only part of our total collection that is not on display. They are packed away in our storage room, that is, all of them except the Millersburg ones which are on display. Periodically I get out the box in which these are stored, unpack all of them, take a good look at them, and then pack them away again. I do keep a list of the pieces on the computer so that I am able to review the pieces that I have.
I’ve written this article in the first person as these are pieces that do not excite Eunice at all. They are part of “our” collection, but I am the one who is interested in them.
Please remember that even though this is not a high-priced piece, and it seldom excites people, it can be something that is important to someone else. I no longer use the term, “rare but who cares.” I feel it is an insult to that piece of glass. There IS someone who cares and that should be considered when looking for and buying carnival glass.
On the left is the Persian Medallion interior pattern on the sauce. On the right is the Grape and Cable exterior on this scarce marigold sauce.
The two pictures show the sauce dish with the interior Persian Medallion pattern and the exterior Grape and Cable pattern. I don’t know how many colors in which this piece was made, but I will be on the lookout for them.
Photos courtesy of Carl and Eunice Booker.
This article first appeared in the ICGA Pump in the March 2017 issue and is reprinted with permission.