Northwood Grape & Cable Blue Stippled Banded Master Fruit Bowl

This amazing piece of glass was one that we came across unexpectedly early on in our collecting.

In the early 90s we had just started to collect Carnival glass and had been to visit our first Antique Centre. We saw a pair of Marigold Lotus & Thistle bowls and bought them. While we were waiting for them to be wrapped, we were chatting to the centre owner about Carnival glass. He asked us how many different colours we had and we were completely stunned. The only colour we had heard of was Marigold, but when he started to tell us about all the other colours there were we decided we had to up our game and try to find some of them.

A few weeks later we decided we would pay another visit to this Antique Centre and we were lucky enough to see a seller unpacking some new items for her cabinet. She unpacked a couple of Marigold pieces but then WOW! A monster package came out of her boxes and we stood wide-eyed waiting to see what it was. That piece was this Blue Grape & Cable master bowl. We could not believe what we were seeing.

At the same time there was another guy hovering who I had spotted out of my eye corner. He wasn't moving away so I asked the seller if I could hold the piece. I was sure as houses not going to let this slip through our fingers. We took our time savouring the magnificent colours and the intricacies of the pattern. There was one small flake off one of the feet, but this couldn't be seen so we decided we would have it. Needless to say the hovering guy looked a tad hacked off but what did we care!

We had no idea of prices or how rare these pieces were. It wasn't until we purchased Dave Doty's book some time later that we realised just what we had got. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what really started our hobby big time.

This bowl measures 11" wide and 6.5" deep.

The Ellen & Keith Richardson Collection UK