Custard glass

How to read it

Custard glass is opaque yellow glass colored with uranium. ORAU’s Museum of Radiation and Radioactivity names it, with Burmese glass, as a uranium glass that is opaque, unlike transparent Vaseline glass, and the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Lab also lists it among the uranium glasses. Like other uranium glass, it glows under a black light. The National Heisey Glass Museum says Heisey made two custard colors, Ivory, the lightest yellow opaque glass, and Ivorina Verde, a darker yellow and the one closer to what collectors now call custard; both colors glow under a black light.

Also searched as: custard glass, yellow milk glass.

Heisey’s custard

The Heisey museum says Heisey was a large producer of custard glass, and that much of it had been wrongly attributed to the Northwood Glass Company. Heisey used the colors in early patterns: #1280 Winged Scroll, #1225 Plain Band, #1295 Beaded Swag, #1245 Ring Band, #1235 Beaded Panel and Sunburst and #1220 Punty Band, and for souvenir pieces. The museum’s gallery dates its Winged Scroll pieces in Ivorina Verde, from toothpick holders and cruets to vases and a cake plate, to 1898–1904. Some are painted with roses or other flowers; others carry souvenir inscriptions.

Custard glass and milk glass

Custard is also a color of milk glass: Glass Bottle Marks lists custard among the shades milk glass was made in. ORAU and the Maryland lab use custard glass for opaque yellow glass colored with uranium, and Heisey’s custard colors glow under a black light as uranium glass does.