Butter Me Up! Part One

​Covered Butters around the world. Left to right: Fentonia, Fenton (USA),
​Moonprint, Brockwitz (Germany), Starburst, Riihimaki (Finland).

Why are most (but not all) Classic Carnival butter dishes, round?

In the early 1900s, the standard for farm and factory production of butter was for it to be moulded into one pound circular "pats" or "rolls" which measured roughly four inches in diameter. Naturally, butter dishes were designed to conform to the round shape.

Some housewives made their own butter too in the shape of chunks or patties. The ads on the right show the moulds which the housewife, or retailer could buy to shape the pats of butter and embellish them with motifs such as acorns or wheat sheaves.

Even as commercialisation developed, butter continued to be distributed in barrels, and retailers continued to sell their butter in pound cakes that would fit perfectly onto the round butter dishes that were in regular household use.

Classic Carnival Butter Dishes - USA

​Virtually all the US Carnival Glass makers produced table sets, comprising a creamer, covered sugar, open spooner and a covered butter dish.

Covered ware was considered hygienic and desirable, as shown by these two amazing Pottery Gazette ads for the United States Glass Co. The 1915 ad was headlined with a snippet from a Daily Mail newspaper article titled “Flies and War Disease” which warned that typhus, typhoid, cholera and spotted fever were all spread by the house fly. The reader was urged to purchase the US Glass products with the warning that “the greatly boomed fly peril will create a demand for covered glassware”.

Pottery Gazette, 1921

Pottery Gazette, 1915

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The United States Glass Company made several lovely Carnival Glass table sets, including Cosmos & Cane and Palm Beach, as in the 1912 Butler Brothers ad below. On the right is a Palm Beach covered butter and sugar in honey amber. Photo courtesy of Seeck Auctions.

Butler Brothers, 1912

Palm Beach, US Glass

​Northwood made this lovely Peacock at the Fountain butter dish (below) - it has a rich purple base colour and a vivid iridescence. The pattern features the peacock and fountain motifs on the top part of the butter (the cover or lid) but the butter base has no peacocks! Instead, there are floral motifs and grasses, reminiscent of the background on Northwood’s Good Luck. And now an interesting fact. The base of the Peacock at the Fountain butter is the same one used for Northwood’s Singing Birds; they are interchangeable. Northwood’s Springtime butter has almost the same base too, with just one small difference. The underside of the Peacock at the Fountain and Springtime bases are plain while the Springtime ones have a Wide Panel design.

Peacock at the Fountain, Northwood

Butler Brothers, 1912

​Fenton made the hugely popular Butterfly and Berry pattern. The butter dish shown below is blue; described in the 1911 Butler Brothers ad alongside it as “royal blue iridescent finish”. Note that the ball and claw feet on the butter also feature on the rest of the table set and berry set items. 

Butler Brothers, 1911

Butterfly and Berry, Fenton

​The Butterfly and Berry table set was a big seller for Fenton and continued to be featured in the Butler Brothers catalogues until at least the mid 1920s and probably beyond. Sears Roebuck ads feature the table set as late as 1927 and Fenton’s own records indicate that they had stocks until at least 1929.

Imperial - Below is a glowingly coloured ad for Imperial’s Open Rose (Lustre Rose) pieces, including the table set. You can see the butter dish at bottom right in the ad. This is a rare coloured ad for Carnival Glass and was shown in a very rare “Perry G. Mason” Goods and Premiums catalogue that was dated 1925.

​Read Part Two of "Butter Me Up!" - Classic Carnival Butter Dishes around the World: England, Finland, Germany and South America.