Summit Art Glass Company Open Salt

Today’s Museum Monday treasure from the Museum of American Glass in WV is a sky blue carnival double open salt in the form of a basket. It was made by the Summit Art Glass Company and listed in their catalogs from the 1980s and 1990s as the No. 428 Imperial Double Salt Basket, indicating that it was made from one of the moulds that Summit acquired after Imperial closed. Summit was founded in 1972 by Russell and Joanne Vogelsong, initially having glass made by Mosser and other companies from moulds that they owned. Ultimately, they built up an inventory of some 500 moulds from St. Clair, Westmoreland, Imperial, Cambridge, and others, which led them to start their own factory in 1984 in Ravenna, Ohio, operating it until 2006, a year after Mr. Vogelsong’s death. At that time Rosso acquired this mould.

This basket is 4” long, 2 ¼” wide, and 2 ¾” high. It is not marked. The use of marks on Summit reissues is problematic for some collectors. Although a few of them are marked with V in a circle (for Vogelsong), the company routinely left any marks that were already in the mould, so many Summit items can be found with marks from Westmoreland and other original manufacturers. That has made some collectors wary of Summit, which is a shame because they did some wonderful carnival finishes and unusual colors that cannot be confused with those used by the originators of the patterns.