Completing a collection...early Fenton Vasa Murrhina fan vases

Several years ago, I ran across a beautiful, 7-inch tall fan vase made by Fenton Glass, it still had the manufacturer's sticker on it after those many years, It was a pretty blue, green and white item with a lot of built-in sparkle. We wandered around the estate sale and found a few other items to buy; however, I kept wandering back to gaze at "the vase" again and again. As we prepared to leave, my wife said, "You'd better go get it." It was only like $15, we had no need for it...but it was pretty!

After we'd had it at home a while, my wife went online and looked it up...turns out it was made from 1964-1967, during my Air Force tour of duty. The Fenton Glass Company was founded in Ohio in 1905 by Frank and John Fenton, they later moved to West Virginia. Initially, they manufactured high-priced decorative glass for the elite but the Great Depression changed their focus to creating "glasses for the masses", selling thru outlets such as Woolworths and McCrorys.

The online source my wife had found told us they made it in four colors, some for the entire production run and some for only a year or two...no really accurate records about this were kept. I thought that it might be nice to try to collect the entire set, just because... We began looking for them when we went on our occasional antiquing visits to local shops or on vacations, we do that sometimes. No luck! So, I turned to eBay and began doing a periodic check for them, not to much later, I came across a rose/green one and bid a few time but it got away. Turns out the blue/green aventurine (which I already had) and the rose/green were the most common so I did acquire a rose/green vase fairly quickly, then I found and bought an autumn orange model (basically orange, brown, white and sparkly. After more research, I learned that the rose mist (dark and light pink) was pretty rare and about this time I discovered that there was a fifth color, blue mist (again, dark and light blue) which was very uncommon. OK, the gauntlet has been tossed, right? After a couple of years of bidding and losing on rose mists, I did finally get one and during this quest, I saw my first blue mist on eBay, it went up pretty quickly and eventually sold for nearly $200. While it was still on the site, another blue mist appeared and shot right up there, again, no sale for me as I wasn't willing to go so high. Shortly thereafter a third appeared (could have been one of these re-posted?), again, big $$. Then a long, long dry spell--perhaps two years. With my collection sitting at 80% complete, I kept looking and finally found another. It bid up quickly, then faltered...I had set a top bid of $100.79 and just before the auction closed, someone bumped it up to $100 and quit...go figure, my .79 saved the day and I completed my collection. I guess the "down economy" worked for me this time.

These vases are created by a process called Vasa Murrhina, meaning "vessel of gems", I believe. It's a process whereby colored, crushed glass flakes (frit) is placed between layers of glass, creating beautiful colors and sparkle. My original aventurine vase has flecks of green and blue caught in opal, encased by a clear exterior layer. The others use the same process with different colors being added,