Butterprint (Pyrex pattern)

How to read it

Butterprint was one of the first printed patterns on Corning’s opal Pyrex, preceded only by Snowflake and Pink Daisy, according to the Corning Museum of Glass’s Pyrex pattern library. It came out in 1957, and with Gooseberry it was the first pattern on the new Cinderella bowls, a nesting set of large mixing bowls with a handle or spout on each side, designed by John Philip Johnson. The museum calls the design a turquoise on white and white on turquoise Amish print, and collectors still call it Amish, or Farmer and Wife. It was discontinued in 1968. PYREX is a registered trademark of Corning Incorporated (see PYREX and pyrex).

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Colours and sets

Smithsonian magazine names turquoise Butterprint, with its Amish farming couple, among the pieces most popular with collectors. The pattern sold well enough for Corning to issue it in other colours: the museum lists promotional sets in orange and in pink on white, and white on pink, from the late 1950s and early 1960s. Pyrex Love, a collectors’ reference, describes the other colourings as orange-yellow on white and pink on white, and notes that the smallest refrigerator dish has no farmers on it, only the rooster and corn.

Butterprint also came as a Bake, Serve and Store set (470) and an Oven, Refrigerator and Freezer set (500) from 1959, and a casserole set (480) from 1960.

The Turquoise line

In 1963 Corning grouped Butterprint and Snowflake, both white on turquoise, into a line called Turquoise, with the same blue tint for both. A Multitone Blue bowl set was added to it later.