Here’s one of my favorite glass books. The title alone is super: Great American Glass of the Roaring 20’s and Depression Era. It’s pretty useful for identification, although you won’t find extensive lines of stemware or plates. Instead use this book to spot characteristic shapes.
Measell and Wiggins show pieces like vases, center handled servers, serving plates, bowls, candy jars. These are the pieces you’ll find antiquing but won’t be able to identify if all you have are books that show individual patterns. Use this book to find design features like handle shapes, or proportions. Then you’ll be able to identify those mystery accessory pieces – and – even better, you’ll be familiar with shapes.
This book has colored pictures from several companies we don’t see often in glass books – Beaumont, Diamond, West Virginia – plus write ups on more companies. I appreciated seeing some good clear photos of New Martinsville since my book specific to New Martinsville has poor quality photos. You’ll find that many glass reference books that cover one company tend to spend more space on recognized pattern lines, etches, cuttings, stemware, and don’t give much attention to the accessory/miscellaneous pieces.
The colored photos are very well done, with enough detail to give you a clear idea what the piece is and the colors are excellent. I have been able to identify lots of rather obscure pieces that are not part of a pattern using this. In fact the book paid for itself several times over when I found some nifty pieces of Beaumont glass.
One of the reviewers, who is apparently an expert on Paden City, gave the book very poor marks for accuracy. I’m not an expert and found it quite good and highly enjoyable.