Fenton Goddess of Harvest Blue Six-Ruffle Bowl

"My Needle in a Haystack"                                                               

As a kid, my parents dragged me around to all the farm auctions nearby. They would buy all sorts of things, nothing specific. My mother started collecting the Orange Tree pattern in marigold in 1992. I decided to start collecting Carnival glass a year later, and chose to collect Orange Tree in blue. Of course, we all know that you can't just stay with one pattern.

I did what all of us have done. I started hitting the paper for local auctions, flea markets, and antique shops. I saw an upcoming auction in Carrollton, Missouri, stating it had old Carnival glass. It was a cold, wet, snowy day on the morning of  December 4th, 1993. I was only 25 years old, soon to be 26. My parents lived in nearby Brookfield, Missouri, and I resided in Chillicothe, Missouri. They picked me up, and we were off to the auction.

There was a lot of glass and household items at the sale, and it was going to be a long day. I saw only one bowl that looked to me to be Carnival glass, but it had a human figure on it, and I was not knowledgable enough to know if such a pattern existed. I went outside and looked at my Bill Edwards encyclopedia, but did not find the pattern. The auction was going slow, so we decided to leave and go home. My parents were driving, and I was in the backseat thumbing through Bill Edwards still trying to come up with a pattern. Then "bam!" there it was, a Goddess of Harvest. Somehow, I had overlooked it. It's easy to do when your heart is pounding with excitement.

I looked in back at the suggested price list, and I said, "Dad, I think we should turn around". He agreed to go back, not even knowing if it would even still be there. We arrived and it was still there. They had just started on that row. I studied the design and went to the car to compare it with the photograph in Bill Edwards again. It looked like what was depicted in the book, but I did not know if this was a pattern that was reproduced. I was going to just see what the bidding started at and just where it would go.

It started at $5 and was going up in $5 increments. As the price went up, so did my mother's blood pressure. Soon she was taking off her coat, and then her sweatshirt. Her face was turning beet red, and she was starting to sweat. This was told to me by my father, who was watching my mother and making sure she did not pass out. Finally, we arrived to the end of the bidding, and I had a bowl.

I really did not know what I had until I showed it to Mickey Reichel. He promised me, all those years ago, he'd keep the news of this bowl confidential. I also talked to John Britt about it. I guess I found my "needle in a haystack", so to speak. So, good luck to you. I'm sure there are still plenty of needles out there waiting to be found.

The Darrell Neeley Collection