On a recent trip to Indiana to visit a dear friend, I wanted to gift her with some dishes since I know she likes dishes (likeI do) and she likes to host gatherings (like I do). I chose a couple pieces of Indiana Glass from my “collection.” In order to give her a little background of the glass pieces, I looked online and discovered some interesting information.
I learned Indiana had a thriving glass manufacturing industry during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The discovery of natural gas in the region during the late 1800s was what drew dozens of glass factories to the state.
I found out the specific Indiana Glass I was gifting, was made in Dunkirk, Indiana. Dunkirk is known as the “Glass Capital of Indiana.” (I didn’t know.) Dunkirk had over 20 glass factories at its peak. The dishes I gave my friend were Indiana Glass Sandwich pattern, made in the 1920s.
There’s more… I learned there was a glass museum in Dunkirk, Indiana. That sounded very interesting. On a whim I looked up to see how far Dunkirk was from the town where I was going to visit my friend, and found it was only 30 minutes away! I thought it would be great fun to visit the museum, and my friend thought so too, once I told her about all my discoveries.
So, off we went to visit the glass museum in the tiny town of Dunkirk with many vacant storefronts but a nice, small, public library attached to the nice, larger glass museum.
We paid our admission fee ($2) and an elderly gentleman got up from behind the desk and took us into the museum. He had retired from the glass industry where he worked for 30 years. He had a ton of knowledge that he enjoyed passing on to us.
We had a great time looking at two floors of glass, with hundreds of glass pieces, all labeled and most in enclosed cases.
On the way home we stopped at an antique store. We found some Indiana Glass, and I bought another piece. 😉
(Apparently the Dunkirk Glass Days is still an annual affair.)