The Glass-aholic

I admit it. I am a glass-aholic.

What makes a person a glass-aholic? Some warning signs:

1. You notice a marked increase in the amount of glass in their home. Especially useless glass that sits on shelves, in cabinets and in windows.

2. The person begins throwing around words like Hazel Atlas, Blenko, Fenton and Fostoria.

3. They use strange acronyms like EAPG, AH and HA, and PIA.

4. They spend hours browsing books with pictures of glass. In extreme cases, they mutter "oooh" and "ahhhh." In very severe cases, the books are filled with markings and post-it notes.

5. They join Facebook groups, like Vintage Glass, Blenko Collectors, American Pattern Glass Society and Pyrex Lovers. A trip to a glass plant or museum is like a holy pilgrimage.

6. They study the bottoms of glass pieces, muttering about logo shapes and pontils

7. They spend evenings on eBay, looking at glass and adding it to their "Watch" list. Sometimes they even buy the pieces they are looking at.

8. They buy glass at thrift stores because if they don't buy it the thrift might toss the chipped/cracked/stained 100-year-old piece in the dumpster. They keep jars of broken glass shards from favorite pieces that met untimely deaths. The disease has morphed in these people to GRD (Glass Rescue Disease).

9. They add more shelves and cabinets and fill them with glass.

10. They decorate for holidays by changing the glass in the shelves and cabinets to suitable colors: red and green for Christmas, ruby, pink and amethyst for Valentine's pale greens, yellows and pink for Easter, orange, amber, and ebony for Halloween, and so on.

If you're guilty of being a glass-aholic, you might recognize yourself in the above indicators. There really doesn't seem to be any hope of a cure. You may try to sell your glass, but you will probably relapse and buy more.

The upside to this disease is that you will eventually become knowledgeable about glass and people will come to you for advice and information. This is your chance to spread the contagion to the unsuspecting, who will soon be as impossibly infected as you are yourself.

If this happens, congratulate yourself. You will have made the world a better, more sparkly place.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.