Milk glass

How to read it

Milk glass is opaque or nearly opaque glass, most often white, pressed or blown. Glass Bottle Marks, a reference site for glass collectors, says that in the 19th-century glass industry it was called opal, opaline or opal ware, and that the pattern-glass author Ruth Webb Lee preferred milk white, a name that did not catch on with collectors. The white comes from an opacifier in the batch, most often tin dioxide with arsenic, sometimes bone ash and other compounds. Besides white, it was made in blue, green, turquoise, yellow, custard, pink, lavender, black and other colors. Collectors call the green shades jadeite; the National Depression Glass Association’s journal defines Jade-ite as basically a green milk glass.

Also searched as: hobnail milk glass, milk glass, opal glass, white milk glass.

Where it came from

Glass Bottle Marks traces milk glass back to Venice by the 1500s at least, as a cheaper alternative to the porcelain then being imported from China. In the US, opaque glass was made by the 1850s, and the Boston and Sandwich Glass Company (1825–1888) was making opaque candlesticks and lamps in several colors by then. Frank Chipman’s history of the Sandwich factory, The Romance of Old Sandwich Glass (1932), says milk white glass was turned out in abundance in its later years, much of it table ware in Basket Weave or a berry pattern, with open-work edges. The glass eggs that farmers put in hens’ nests to encourage laying were milk white glass too, and Sandwich made its share.

The Victorian makers

Glass Bottle Marks puts milk glass at its most popular in the late 1880s and 1890s and into the first years of the 20th century. Atterbury & Company of Pittsburgh and Challinor, Taylor & Company of Tarentum, Pennsylvania, are probably the best known for making it in large quantities. Atterbury’s pieces include the hen-on-nest covered dish with red glass eyes and a fish-shaped relish dish marked PATENTED JUNE 4TH 1872, made in large numbers from the 1870s to the 1890s. McKee, Dithridge, Gillinder and Central Glass were among the other American makers; in England there was Sowerby, and in France Vallerysthal.

The 20th-century makers

Milk glass came back in waves through the 20th century. Glass Bottle Marks names Westmoreland, Fenton and Imperial as the big three of modern milk glass, with Jeannette, Anchor Hocking, Hazel-Atlas and others making it too. Westmoreland introduced its Paneled Grape pattern in 1940 and made it in a huge range of pieces for many years. Fenton’s Hobnail pattern dates from 1939, though white hobnail pieces are said to have come in about 1950.

Milk glass, opal and opalescent

The words overlap. Glass Bottle Marks says milk glass that lets some light through has been called clambroth, opalescent or alabaster by some collectors. Chipman, writing about Sandwich, keeps opal and opalescent for a different glass, combined with milk white and other colors. Opaque pale yellow glass colored with uranium is custard glass.