Westmoreland mark (WG)

How to read it

Westmoreland began in 1889, when the directors of the Specialty Glass Company of East Liverpool, Ohio, moved their plant to Grapeville, about 40 km (25 miles) east of Pittsburgh, for its natural gas (Joseph D. Lokay, Rainbow Review, 1977). It was the Westmoreland Specialty Company until it became the Westmoreland Glass Company, in 1920 according to the National Westmoreland Glass Collectors’ Club or 1923 according to Lokay. The Brainard family ran it from the 1930s. Westmoreland was best known for opal glass, or milk glass, and its milk glass production peaked in the 1940s to 1960s. The WG replaced the Keystone W on its tableware in 1946, the club’s timeline says; Lokay, writing while the company was still working, says the WG had only been used since 1949.

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The Keystone W

Before the WG, Westmoreland marked its tableware with a W inside the outline of a Pennsylvania keystone. Lokay dates it from 1910, the club from 1912. The USPTO record of the company’s 1982 registration of the name WESTMORELAND gives 1 July 1910 as its first use.

The last mark

J. H. Brainard sold the company to David Grossman, a broker from St Louis with no experience of running a glass company; the club’s timeline gives the sale as 1980 in one place and 1982 in another. A new mark followed: the name Westmoreland in a semicircle above a W.

Westmoreland marks on later glass

When the factory closed its moulds were sold to other companies and to individuals, who left the Westmoreland marks in some of them, the club says. The semicircle mark in particular is often found on reproductions, because it was not removed from the moulds. Plum Glass, started in 1985 by former Westmoreland workers with Westmoreland’s machinery, equipment and moulds, marked its glass with a P inside a keystone.

The registration

Westmoreland registered its name for pressed glassware in 1982. The USPTO cancelled the registration on 24 March 1989, after the company had closed, because no Section 8 declaration was filed.