Advertising and Souvenir pieces

Advertising, Souvenir and Commemorative Carnival Glass

This is our "Homepage" for all the Lettered Pieces that are on our website. From here, there are links to all the material about Lettered Pieces arising from our research into "The Story Behind The Glass", and to pictures in our Carnival Glass Galleries.

"Lettered Pieces" is the general term used by collectors to cover Carnival Glass pieces that were made specifically for the purposes of Advertising (and Promotion), as a Souvenir, or as a Commemorative item. Lettered Pieces span the whole period of Carnival Glass production from Classic (old) Carnival through to Contemporary, modern day items.

On the right is an article from the 1909 House Furnishing Review. It explored the benefits to businesses of offering souvenirs for particular events, such as a new opening, or for advertising purposes.

It explains the marketing mindset at the time when the earliest pieces of Classic Carnival were being made - note in particular that advertising souvenirs should not appear "cheap", with the advice that "if you are going to give away souvenirs, be sure to select articles that are worth while".

There is also the clear recommendation to ensure that articles to be given away "would be likely to appeal to the ladies."

In Classic Carnival, Lettered Pieces are generally hard-to-find and some are very scarce: the main producers were in the USA. In terms of the actual pattern/designs, Fenton made the most, followed by Northwood and then Millersburg. Dugan made only three, and Imperial is only known for two items.

Some scarce examples are also known from England (Matthew Turnbull), Australia (Crown Crystal), South America (Cristalerias Rigolleau), Finland (Riihimaki) and India.

When Carnival production was revived in the USA (Contemporary Carnival made from the 1960s and 70s through to the present day) glassmakers were quick to spot the opportunity to make Commemorative and Souvenir Carnival items in particular, to meet the demand from a very enthusiastic and lucrative "collectables" market.

Classic Carnival Lettered Pieces (USA)

Any new research about these pieces has to start with acknowledging the ground-breaking work of (the late) John D. Resnik, who sadly passed away in 2011. His self-published book, The Encyclopedia of Carnival Glass Lettered Pieces, published in 1989 was based on research that came mainly from Public Libraries. It must have been an arduous task to research and write, and it is still the “go to” reference work on Classic Lettered Pieces made in the USA.

John defined Advertising Pieces thus:

“advertising pieces laud a product, company, or service and were purchased by that entity to be given away as premiums or other forms of promotion.” There is no doubt they were popular, and used as premiums to tempt customers to the stores that gave them away.

Inevitably, since John's book was published, much more information has been unearthed and written about Lettered Pieces (thanks to the internet and various digitised newspaper sources), and of course Carnival Glass makers have continued to produce a regular stream of Contemporary pieces with an advertising / commemorative / souvenir theme.