CorningWare: Everything Oldish is Newish Again

Hopefully, you caught my recent synopsis of a fresh Supreme Court decision addressing prosecutorial overreach in Dubin v. United States. I know I have been slacking on the law ‘splainers around here and I intend to do better. How about this: I promise to write up cases/legal stuff more often if you indulge me in other stuff, like telling you about my vintage cookware collection.

It started like this: Picture it: Lewisburg, West Virginia, April 2023. My family and I are there for the annual chocolate festival. We wander into a curio/vintage/antique shop to collect some sort of chocolate confection and started to browse around at the eclectic items for sale. If you haven’t been to these shops, you’re missing out. They are nostalgia wonderlands, full of old toys, clothes, tools, glass objects, cookware, home decor, old advertising signs, furniture, etc. Some of it is truly antique; a lot is straight up junk. In the middle is my sweet spot.

I saw these:

You are undoubtedly familiar with the pattern, and if you, your mom, or your grandmother didn’t have any of this in their kitchens, you are a rarity. It is CorningWare, with its trademark “Blue Cornflower” motif. The nostalgia grabbed me, as did the price, as I brought these, in pristine condition, home for under $20.

On the drive back home I started doing some research, and learned that CorningWare was created accidentally, when a piece of photosensitive glass was placed into a furnace and the heat was accidentally cranked up to 900 degrees instead of the intended 600. The end result was an opaque, milky white piece of glass. When the operator, S. Donald Stookey, removed the piece with tongs, it slipped to the floor… and did not shatter. Thus was birthed the most amazing, versatile kitchenware in history.

They called this new material “Pyroceram” and its first use was not in casserole dishes but for nosecones for ballistic missiles, due to its heat-resistance. But its usefulness in the kitchen was soon recognized; this stuff can go in the freezer, in the microwave, in the oven, and on the stove top – yes, you can cook with it right on a burner. It can go from the freezer directly into a hot oven without exploding. It is dishwasher safe, and the patterns do not fade or flake off (with some exceptions for later patterns.) It is nearly indestructible, which is why so much of it is still around today.

It holds heat, is stick-resistant, and easy to clean. They made casseroles, skillets, sauce pans, roasting pans, pie plates, tea kettles, coffee percolators, and more. The blue cornflower is of course the most recognizable design, but I was delighted to learn that there are dozens of other patterns. I learned to discern a piece’s rough age based on the back stamps. Then I started scouring local thrift and antique stores, and my collection grew.

And grew.

And grew.

Just look at all those pretty patterns!

And the best part: this stuff is cheap! Or, at least, it should be. There are bogus articles floating around online claiming this stuff is worth thousands, and there are some sellers who are apparently trying to finance their kids’ college educations by selling a few pieces, but their targets are fools.  The beauty of collecting CorningWare is that most pieces, even if in perfect condition and complete with lid, should go for less than $15.

I confess; I have paid a premium (though not thousands by any means) for a few hard to find pieces. The first such splurge was this 2.5qt casserole in a pattern that even CorningWare experts have had difficulty finding info about. It is believed to be called “atomic starburst” or “black atomic star”:

Note that “fin” handle on the lid; that dates it to pre-1961, and the dish itself is roughly 1960.

And just yesterday, I acquired via eBay another sought-after and hard to find item: The bake tray in the pattern “Renaissance”, circa 1970:

In case you were curious, the image is the port in Stockholm, taken from an etching in the book “Suecia Antiqua et Hodierna” written by Erik Dahlberg in the mid-1600s. This is not just bakeware. This is art.

Secondary to my love of this stuff is my new fondness for wandering around these shops looking at all the other things they have besides CorningWare. My eye is constantly being caught by something that my grandmother owned or that we had in our house when I was growing up. I realized why that is. We were poor, so most of our household items were inexpensive and mass produced – like CorningWare – so there is a lot of it around in these second-hand shops. A few examples of things I’ve found that were staples of my childhood:

I’ve joined some online groups of other vintage houseware enthusiasts and soon learned what a dangerous hobby this could be to someone’s bank account. Pyrex, for example, a sister to CorningWare also made by the Corning company, has become quite the hot commodity and is significantly more expensive than CorningWare – particularly the vintage pink or turquoise mixing bowl sets. They are routinely going for $300 to $500 dollars a set, and some for much more. However, they are much less durable, more easily broken, and not nearly as functional as my CorningWare. I am actually using my collection, as often as I can, so they are not just gathering dust or taking up space. There’s a blue cornflower underneath of this Dutch apple pie.

Of course, as versatile as it is, my CorningWare can’t replace my large pots and pans, but I get a lot of joy out of using them.

One last note, kind of the cherry on top, is that a great deal of CorningWare was made right here in my beloved West Virginia, at a plant in Martinsburg! I hear you can find some really unusual pieces in the thrift and antique shops up there due to its proximity to the former plant. And to be honest, the hunt is part of the fun, so I’ll definitely need to have a look next time I’m in the area.

So, there you have it, Em’s current obsession/old lady pastime. Do you have this stuff in your cabinets? And how much do you want for it? (Just kidding.) (Sort of.)