Northwood Poppy Show Horehound Plate

I think Poppy Show is my favorite of all the Carnival Glass patterns. It's intricate and just plain beautiful. With the right iridescence it is downright irresistible. It is said that the rarest of Poppy Show plates are those that are aqua opalescent. There are at least a dozen of those...maybe more. The right one can make a grown man cry, lol! But now, here we have a horse of a different color.

This vibrant plate is in the color horehound. Horehound you say? Yes, horehound, which is a type of amber. Horehound Poppy Show plates are virtually unheard of because there are none to be found, and this one had been kept in the private collection of the late Elwood "Woody" & Marlene Funk collection for several years since the early 1970's. This is the only perfect example known. Yes, there is one other reported that had sadly been broken in two and the story of that one will be included at the foot of this article.

Woody & Marlene collected some of the most beautiful glass in our hobby. This plate was highly coveted by them. Aaron Hurst asked to buy it from them years ago but they would not sell it but they promised they would let him know some day if they needed to. Well, in 2007 that day eventually came when they would call Aaron to say they wanted to sell it so they could put the money towards the college tuition for their granddaughter. Aaron was happy to buy it and shortly afterwards sold it to Rich Brazel. At the time, Aaron didn't realize it was the only one known and regretted selling it in haste. The following year, in 2008 when the economy crashed, he bought it back from Rich, even giving him a profit at that, and was happy to own it again. Later on, he then sold it to Carol Cook who owned it for a few years. Then, in June of 2016, Carol sold it back to Aaron who then thought of me when he went to resell it. He was tickled to have owned it three times and said it was nice that I wanted it because now it would get the attention it deserved. He said not many people know it exists and he knows now, through Showcase, people can finally enjoy it.

When I opened the package in the mail on my birthday, I didn't know what to expect this plate to look like. I thought it would be dark amber but it was a light amber with beautiful delicate pastel iridescence. It's very bright and the center, where the glass is the darkest, has a rich earthy undertone with magenta and blue overtones for iridescence. The combination of these colors and rich hues are fantastic. It is very difficult to capture its charm in photography. I hope you enjoy these photos. It is my further hopes to display it during a rarities seminar one day at a convention.

Please be sure to click on each picture once more after opening them to see all the details enlarged.

The Christina Katsikas Collection