Northwood Grape & Cable Variant Marigold Ruffled Bowl "Pink Flamingo"
Description
My "Pink Flamingo" by David Richards, Cumbria, UK
This is the bowl I show to people who would dismiss Carnival Glass as "that horrible nasty orangey yellow stuff". Well there's none of that here! True, it's a very common pattern and shape: a standard Northwood Grape and Cable, eight ruffle, 8.5 inch collar based bowl. Actually it's the variant version distinguished by having additional vine tendrils snaking towards its centre. What sets it apart, however, is its very unusual colour and finish. I call this my Pink Flamingo bowl.
The face of this bowl is a mass of soft pink shades, darkening to magenta at the centre, with lighter fondant pink areas where light reflects off the curves of the ruffles, and just a hint of orange between its teeth. There are subtle highlights of pale lime green, turquoise and gold. The finish is a silky matte and the iridescent coating appears thickly applied so that the basketweave rear surface pattern is largely obscured.
The rear basketweave patterned surface is similarly heavily coated, with a more reflective finish with a bias towards magenta and gold colouring. The base glass is clear, so it definitely qualifies as a Marigold piece. I don't know whether Northwood had a name for this finish. It brings to my mind memories of the great flocks of pink and magenta tinted Flamingos I saw wading through the shallow margins of Lake Abijatta in Ethiopia, their pastel colouring muted in the heat haze.
It's not dark enough to be called Pumpkin Marigold, or translucent enough to be called Pastel Marigold. Perhaps it would be most fitting to describe it as Flamingo Pink Marigold?
I remember finding this a few years ago on a stall of mixed antique items and at the time almost passing it by as a just another piece of pink China. Normally in these situations any Carnival glass screams out to a focused collector by virtue of its glitter and sparkle. This did not, and I probably only picked it out because of the Carnival shaping and edging.
The David Richards Collection, Cumbria, UK
