Thou Shall Not Covet Jadite Dishes

OK, now back to how it got started. Well,  I took a day.......OK maybe it was only a few hours of looking, but anyway I decided this was the dish I needed for that salad. I'll just buy two and see if I like them. Oh boy! that was a mistake. I should of just bought some cheap green square plates........but that wouldn't be any fun would it?

A few days later I receive the dishes. Oh my! this is not good.......look how beautiful they are.......just these two will be fine...not...........I must have MORE.

Oh, it's ok I tell my poor husband, I'll just pick up one or two whenever I see them at a good price! Oh yeah, that didn't work either.

The search is on. To Ebay I went..... Finally after about a week and a half charm dishes show up and I WIN!  Four more salad plates, 3 cups and 4 saucers. I'm so happy.

The Charm Collection

Manufactured by Anchor Hocking from 1950 - 1956

This is the luncheon plate which measures 8 3/8".  There is also a a larger dinner plate... 9 1/4" and a smaller salad plate... 6 5/8". It appears both the dinner and salad plates are harder to find then the luncheon. I have not been able to find either yet.

For some reason you will rarely find the Fire King mark on the bottom of these dishes. I did find one auction though, that did have signed plates (I lost that one) I just thought it was interesting to finally see a set with the Fire King mark because the majority of the charm patterns don't have any signatures on them. The signature plates do seem to command a higher price if you find them, although I think most collectors are more interested in the pattern and not the signature. I would say a minimum auction price of $20.00 - $25.00 per plate is the current average. Antique websites are asking $34.00 to $40.00 per plate.

Now I'm off to an auction house. Yeah! they have four more salad plates. I win! Now I have nine salad plates. Life is good so what's the problem?........All this looking for the Charm plates and I'm seeing all sorts of other Jadite items I want....the coveting has begun.
Lord have mercy!

Term Of The Day....."Straw Marks" Say What?

While starting my search for Jadite dishes, I frequently came across some terms in describing the items that I've never heard of before. To me, "Straw Marks" was one of  the funnier ones. What the heck is that? Did "straw" actually become embedded in the glass mold?  Well, who the heck wants straw in their dishes? I had to laugh.

After a little research the mystery unfolds and it's quite simple.  "Straw marks", "shear lines, shear marks", are just surface irregularities on the glass. These "irregular wavy lines" develop on the mold after cooling.....or as cooling occurs during the pouring of the glass. The liquid glass will fold over itself as it fills the mold and harden with these lines. I don't know if straw was ever actually used to cool glass. Some think old time collectors thought this is how it was done and their the ones who started using the term to describe the lines.

Here are a few pictures of what I found on the bottom of some of my plates. Sometimes it's just a line or two, sometimes a little ripple.

The majority of my Fire King pieces have some type of a straw mark. There usually on the bottom, but can be found anywhere on the plate. I think they add a uniqueness to the glass. Each piece is always different. 

Some people think that the glass is damaged when they see or hear the term, but these are not cracks. They are just on the surface.... Replacement Glass collector guidelines say's they should not have any negative effect on the value of the piece. I would have to agree. I have not found them to be a distraction to the beauty of the piece. As a matter of fact, most of the time I find myself really having to look for them by twisting and turning to an angle in order to pick it up. Sure, I guess there could be pieces that have marks that really stand out or that may be very prominent on the front of the piece, but so far I have not encountered that. 


When you look at some of the pictures you might think..oh my that's awful, but they really don't stand out. I had to really zoom in and blowup, otherwise most people probably wouldn't notice them at all.

Again, these look large and distracting in the picture, but I really had to zoom in and get the dish at an angle in order to pick up the mark. I think the picture makes them look worse than they really are.

This one looks much worse than it is. It's one of those that you really have to turn on angle to see otherwise,  believe it or not....... it's very hard to see!

Some large swirl type lines.

How The Jadite Obsession Started.

It was just this past January. Stuck in the house on another one of those cold and snowy days, I started longing to see green again. So what's the first thing that pops into my mind?....... Lettuce...guess I was hungry while I was thinking. I started to image a large green salad before me. This could not just be any ordinary salad in a bowl though, oh no, it had to be on a large, square, GREEN plate!
Well, I didn't have any large, square, green plates and decided I needed to find some. So I did a internet search for those terms.  I found some very pretty green colored dishes....dark green, translucent green, light green and on and on. But then I saw them.....JADITE!  Oh my!  This was it!

I found myself on a antique stores web site which was displaying a gorgeous jadite square plate.  That was it, that was the perfect plate to eat my salads on. The only problem was the cost. They wanted $32.00 and only had two plates in stock! Oh what to do, I now had to have them. I left the site but found myself drifting back to it several times a day just to stare at the beautiful color. For some reason I find peace looking at this glass...sorta like watching fish swim in a bowl........I'll just stare for awhile I thought to myself.

Welcome To......... I Love Jadite Blog!

Well the title should tell you a little about the site. I love Jadite or as some might write... Jadeite. It's a beautiful green (minty) opaque glass with a translucent quality. Depending on how the light hits it, the shades of color seem to move and change before your eyes. I find it quite unique. It was first introduced in 1930 by Mckee Glass Company followed by Jeannette and then my favorite....Anchor Hocking Fire King.

I'm afraid I'm addicted to it and can't seem to get enough of it. If your here reading, chances are your hooked too! It just seems to capture you on first site, and then your hooked. The world goes green!


I'm just getting started here, but I hope to add pictures of my own collection as it progresses along with some historical information about patterns, dates, markings and prices.


My favorite......so far.... is the Fire King Restaurant ware and Fire King Charm which I will talk more about in upcoming post.  Like the dishes I'm vintage, so please bare with me as I learn some new things about blogging and how to get this information in here.

I'm just looking to make this a fun place to maybe talk about collecting vintage kitchenware. I'm also hoping I can compile a reference library for not only myself, but others who may like to get historical information. I am new at this and will be learning as I go along. If you like to follow please jump on board and tell me about your collection, and how you started too.

What's not to love about that! I just love the light reflections.

Original Anchor Hocking Fire King Jade-ite ad.