Fenton mark

How to read it

Fenton opened in Martins Ferry, Ohio, in 1905 as a firm decorating other makers’ glass, and built its own factory at Williamstown, West Virginia, in 1906 (e-WV, the West Virginia Encyclopedia). It was the leading maker of the iridescent pressed glass collectors later named carnival glass, and its opal or milk glass sold well for decades, hobnail above all. Fenton began marking its glass with the oval logo in the 1970s. The company’s own logo history says the oval went into Carnival glass only in 1970, into Hobnail and other ware in 1972 and 1973, and by 1975 almost all ware had it, because collectors wanted to see it on all the glass. Fenton stopped traditional glassmaking in 2011. The FENTON name is registered today to Fenton Gift Shops, Inc. of Williamstown, for table glassware, vases, candleholders, figurines and other glass, with 12 May 1950 given as its first use (USPTO, registered 2019).

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The decade numbers

Fenton added a small 8 to its moulds in 1980 for the 1980s, a 9 for the 1990s and a 0 for 2000 to 2009. From glass made for 2010 it used a 1, which it planned to keep through 2019. In its last years it also added USA close to the logo in all its moulds; Fenton wrote that USA appears only on glass made at the Williamstown factory.

The script F in an upright oval

Glass made in moulds Fenton bought from other factories has a different logo, a script F inside an upright oval. In Fenton’s account, reprinted by the National Depression Glass Association, this began in the 1980s for moulds from the former McKee Glass Co. and from the liquidation of the Imperial Glass Corporation, and continued for moulds bought later from Beaumont, L. G. Wright and others. Its logo history gives the start as 1983. Moulds from Verlys, Paden City and the United States Glass Co. are the exception: glass from them has the oval Fenton logo.

Marks on seconds

Fenton marked its “preferred seconds”, sold mainly in its own gift shop, with their own signs: a flame shaped like a calligraphy S earlier in the 1990s, a solid or open star sandblasted on from June 1996 to July 1998, and an F from August 1998.

After 2011

The West Virginia Encyclopedia records that the factory kept making jewellery and glass beads after 2011 and the gift shop stayed open, selling the stock. Wood County Schools bought the land in 2017. The gift shop moved elsewhere in Williamstown, and glass from the original Fenton moulds is made at Mosser Glass in Ohio and sold through the Fenton Gift Shop.