Millersburg Feather & Heart Vaseline Water Pitcher

So far, this is the only known Millersburg Glass "Feather & Heart" water pitcher in the rare base color Vaseline. It is also the only Vaseline pitcher made by Millersburg in any of its many patterns. It's covered with a brilliant, radium, marigold iridescence on a incised pattern that invites light, any kind of light, to play within the sharp angles. It is so exciting,  just standing in its presence will put you in a state of awe, like a firework that doesn't stop!

This was purchased at the October 7th, 2017 annual Millersburg Gathering Auction in Millersburg, Ohio where the glass of Karen & Doug Engel and Randy & Bo Jones was being sold by auctioneer Jim Wroda BUT this pitcher actually belonged to neither. It was a consignment from the family of the late Charlie Mochel.

The auction catalog described it as "Very impressive water pitcher that is solid Vaseline top to bottom with beautiful pink, blue & yellow iridescence. Only one known...No need for a black light on this one, it screams VASELINE!" and that it does.

This is the most exciting piece of Vaseline in Carnival Glass that I know of and it's one of two of the only Vaseline pitchers found in Carnival Glass as a whole. The Mochel family owns the second known Vaseline pitcher in the Butterfly & Fern pattern made by Fenton. There is a Blackberry Block pitcher, also by Fenton, owned by the late Carlton Tarkington that was thought to be Vaseline but it has been determined that it is not, now referred to as an amber/yellow based glass pitcher. I have exhausted many different avenues searching for other examples but to no avail.  For now, we know of two pitchers.

This hefty pitcher stands 8 1/8" tall, 8 1/4" wide from spout to handle, 5 1/8" wide opening, and 4" across the base.

The upper portion features twelve vertical feathers that are separated by incised, vertical, v-shaped grooves that invite light to create runways of stunning baby blues, pinks, yellows, and a hint of green all around.

Then there are six hobstars belting the middle with English Hobnails between each one and below those are six up-side-down, rounded, smooth hearts, very pretty, with 8-point stars inside each one. The base is pronounced and has a 24-point incised star. The mould was made in three parts; two mould lines running down where the spout begins and one right down the center of the handle.

In speaking to Brent Mochel, he can remember his father, the late Charlie Mochel, heading out to Hagerstown, Maryland solo to attend a Burns Auction sale. It was the 1994 Mid Atlantic Carnival Glass Jamboree Auction held on October 14 & 15, 1994. The auction was what Tom Burns called a "whopper" because it was a combination of three collections being sold; Gladys Weatherford from Tennessee, Carl Rote from Pennsylvania and Mr. & Mrs Henry Yeska also from Pennsylvania plus a couple of extra consignments which included this pitcher that belonged to Steve Maag and Eldon Bicksler.

Steve and Eldon previously bought it together at an auction in Bucyrus, Ohio at the Bucyrus County Fairgrounds that same year (in 1994) for $6,100. Steve Maag remembers, "The auctioneer had no clue about the value of the pitcher. He asked for a very modest opening bid, maybe $100. We bid, then David Cotton bid $1000, auctioneer asked for $1100, we bid, Dave bid $2000, auctioneer asked for $2100, we bid, etc.up to the $6100 when Eldon and I got it. Needless to say,everyone, including the auctioneer, was amazed!".

So, David Cotton was the under-bidder who remembers that auction well. Auctioneer Lyle Gebhardt, who is still in business today, listed a Bucyrus Estate Auction in the local Salem, Ohio newspaper called the Farm & Dairy. This ad described the contents of a home that included a Millersburg Marigold Feather & Heart 7-pc. Water Set that he particularly wanted to see. When he got to the auction, he spied the pitcher instantly and began to inspect it when the auctioneer approached him and asked if he would tell him why the base color was so odd, so peculiar on it. Dave started walking to the door to look at it in a better light but he only took and few steps before he realized what it was and turned back to tell Lyle that is was a rare color called Vaseline. This is when Steve & Eldon came in. They, too, were interested in the set. Dave remembers Steve taking the pitcher and going under the table to use his portable black light on it and all he heard was a loud "Oh! J.C.!". At this point, Steve & Eldon offered to partner up with Dave but he declined stating he wanted to buy it for himself to keep in his collection, not to resell it. So, when it came time to buy it, they would be bidding against each other. When it did come up, Lyle decided to sell the pitcher separately because he thought he would get more for it, saying it did not match the marigold tumblers. The auctioneer at the podium at that moment was Lyle's apprentice who would not go in increments of $1000 bids and kept adding the next increment of $100 more, just like Steve explained. This frustrated Dave to no end and he eventually had enough of the bidding format and let Steve & Eldon have it. He said he would have gone more and should have gone more but he was too rattled. He did manage to buy two of the marigold tumblers that came up next but not before he gave the apprentice auctioneer a piece of his mind about the way the pitcher had sold.

Dave did not go to Hagerstown, Maryland to persue the pitcher again where Steve & Eldon had consigned it to Tom Burns for this auction that Charlie Mochel attended. Charlie did not win the bid at this auction. It was Harold Wagner who bought it for $14,000. Harold was later approached during the auction by Charlie with a generous offer of $15,000 to buy it from him. They struck a deal and Charlie brought the vase home where it remained in his family all these years until it was consigned to the Millersburg Wroda Auction in October 2017. To recap, Steve & Eldon were the first to own it, then Charlie Mochel, and then me. In over a hundred years, it probably only exchanged hands four times, including the original owners. That, in and of itself is rare. Perhaps it was purchased in one of these shops way back when on this main street in Bucyrus, Ohio, which, by the way, was only 70 miles west of the Millersburg Glass factory where this pitcher was made.

In this auction catalog below, it was described by Tom Burns as "Lot #10. M'BURG FEATHER AND HEART HANDLED WATER PITCHER-MARI./VASELINE (ABSOLUTELY UNBELIEVABLE ITEM-WITH GREAT BASE GLASS COLOR AND RADIUM IRID.; 1ST VASELINE PITCHER REPORTED; SUPER, SUPER SUPER!!!)". (Auction catalog below furnished by Ruth Phillips, Pensacola, FL)

Fast forward to October 8, 2017 to the Wroda Millersburg sale, I find it very ironic that Steve Maag was a ring man for the auction when I purchased it. He actually held this pitcher up as it was being sold, even walking out of the tent so the audience could see what it looked like with the sun shining on it. I did not get a photo of him doing that because I was too busy bidding but I did get one of him holding a Mitered Ovals vase here.

I can't even imagine what was on Steve's mind when he held the Hearts & Feather pitcher, that he bought at auction over 23 years ago, as he watched it sell again. He wrote to let me know he "was honored to hold it at the auction" but it was a bittersweet moment where he "wished he had not let it go in the past."  I think maybe this is why the pattern has six up-side-down hearts. I know of it has broken at least six hearts along the way to me!

Brent said this piece inspired his father to buy more Vaseline pieces in the future but none ever came close to the beauty of this pitcher which Brent describes as yellow diamonds from outer space.

And he is right because this pitcher, no matter where it is, always twinkles away with non-stop beauty. It's as if someone plugged it into a socket or it's powered by radioactivity because it shows its charms from across the room like a flashing neon sign in New York's Time Square. No, it cannot hold its secret like many other Vaseline pieces quietly tend to do which typically wait for us to wield the black light upon them, commanding  them to speak! Dramatic, yes! Giddy? YES! or maybe it's the radioactivity getting to me!

This pattern is only found in water sets; pitchers and tumblers. Colors known (besides Vaseline) are marigold, amethyst and green. Many people tend to assume this is the Cambridge Inverted Feather pattern at first sight but the up-side-down hearts along the bottom portion are a dead give-away. 

In reading through an old Lincoln-Land newsletter, issue XVIV No. 6, I found an article on the sale of this pitcher. This is the year it sold twice. The author of this article made a very good point. He said, "It is interesting to note that almost all Millersburg carnival glass that show up in vaseline base color is one of a kind. Other examples are: square ribbon edge Many Stars bowl, ruffled Nesting Swan bowl, Night Stars bon bon, Acorn compote, and three examples of Big Fish in vaseline but all are whimsied into a different shape."  I never thought of that but looking at this list makes it clear. One more to add to that list is a Millersburg Peacock banana or two-sides-up bowl in vaseline,  that I also purchased from the Mochel collection where this pitcher is from. I think the inspired late Charlie Mochel has inspired me to search for more vaseline Millersburg. It seems to be catching!

The Christina Katsikas Collection

Catalog photos courtesy of Jim Wroda Auctions.

The remainder photos taken by Christina Katsikas.

1994 Auction Catalog furnished by Ruth Phillips.

Special thanks to Steve Maag and David Cotton for their recall and experience with this important Millersburg piece. Thanks to them the provenance is as complete as can be. Great work!