Collection Agency: From Glassware to Hardware
Elizabeth Fox has a knack for niche-specific collecting categories across many types of objects. Plus a new Inconspicuous News Roundup!
Collection Agency, a series in which I interview unusual collectors, is an occasional feature of Inconspicuous Consumption. You can see previous installments here.
Also: This post is not paywalled. Enjoy! — Paul
As you may recall, a few months ago I wrote about a vintage Frigidaire advertising glass that’s also a measuring glass. That prompted a comment from reader Elizabeth Fox, who wrote, “I’ve got that glass! Part of my collection of advertising measuring glasses.”
Naturally, I was intrigued by the notion of such a niche obsession, so I asked Elizabeth if she could send me photos of her the glasses in her collection (which, as you can see in the photo above, does indeed include the Frigidaire design that I wrote about). A lot of them are sensational. I’m a sucker for bizarre anthropomorphized mascots, so I particularly like these:
I also like how this next one shows a glass being used, almost inviting you to dispense your desired amount of water in the measuring glass:
And then there’s this next one, whose ad copy riffed on the measuring glass theme:
Once I saw the photos, I wanted to learn more, so I asked Elizabeth if I could interview her. Here’s a transcript of a Zoom call we recently had, edited for length and clarity:
Inconspicuous Consumption: When did you acquire your first measuring glass and which one was it?
Elizabeth Fox: It was the one for Western Stores. I got it at a great big antiques mall in California, probably within the past 10, 12 years. I liked it because I used to go on vacations to a hot springs place and I would stop and get groceries at this little store in the town, and that was their store brand — Western Stores. Also, I hadn’t really seen measuring glasses before, and I thought it was kind of cool.
IC: And after you got that first one, how long did it take you to decide that you wanted to collect a bunch of them?
Fox: It was probably during Covid, when a lot of us went on to eBay and started searching for things because we couldn’t go to flea markets. And it occurred to me that these advertising measuring glasses, they were a category. My husband and I already had a lot of vintage and advertising and souvenir DOF glasses that have “Fresno Yacht Club 1962” and things like that, so it was a good fit.
So I started going on eBay, looking for things to waste money on, and was surprised at how many there were. There was one seller who had a tremendous number, so I contacted him and he said something like, “Yeah, my mom collected them and there’s about 1,200 that I’m trying to sell.” It was like, oh my.
IC: Now that’s a collection.
Fox: Right. So I just started getting them from time to time, and I still go on eBay and look to see what new ones there are. I like them if they’re either some weird brand, like a chemical company, or if they have a phone exchange.
The most recent one I got is for something called Gland-O-Lac Quality Poultry Medicine. It’s a little more modern than the ones I usually get. And it’s interesting because it only has the one measuring scale — most of the glasses have more than one.
IC: How many of these glasses do you have now?
Fox: About two dozen. So it’s not a huge collection, but it’s fun.
IC: What is it specifically about the measuring aspect that appeals to you? Is it the fact that it’s a drinking glass but also has this other function?
Fox: Yeah, and they’re all about the same size. Also, around that time I started collecting them, I started having a gin and tonic as my usual drink, and they’re very useful for that because you just pour in the right amount of gin and then you can fill it up with the tonic. They hold a nice amount of a drink, so it became a thing where every evening I’d get a different glass and have my cocktail.
IC: So you use them as beverage glasses and also for measuring.
Fox: Well, I measure the liquor that’s going in the drink, but I’ve never measured something else, like when I’m cooking or baking. I have standard Pyrex measuring cups for that. But if all of our Pyrex blew up, which apparently happens, then we’re set because we have these other measuring glasses.
IC: Is there one that stands out as your favorite?
Fox: Well, there’s one for Katz Cut-Rate Super Store, and it’s got this happy-looking black cat. That’s my number one.
Fox [continued]: I also like the ones where they show a picture of the business. So there’s one for Builders Emporium, which is a hardware store in southern California that my parents used to go to. They would buy paint and stuff, and I would follow them around being interminably bored. So it’s a company I know, and their glass has a picture of the building, and it’s got a phone exchange. So that’s up there.
IC: So after you got that first one at an antiques mall, have all the rest been from eBay?
Fox: Mostly, yeah. Occasionally I encounter them in the wild, but that’s pretty rare.
IC: Do you have any rules or guidelines, like the glass must have this feature. or it must not have that feature?
Fox: They can’t be too modern. The ones that look really ’70s, they just aren’t that special to me. The Gland-O-Lac one, that’s the exception because it’s a weird product and I do like the drawing of the chicken.
And like I said, if they have a picture of the business, I like that. I mean, the best would be if it was a funeral home, that’d be really fantastic.
IC: Then you could measure your embalming fluid in the glass!
Fox: There you go.
IC: You mentioned earlier how they’re all roughly the same size, and I was wondering about that. Are there other sizes that you’ve opted not to collect?
Fox: Not that I’ve seen. There are those pint measuring glasses that have drink recipes on them, but I’ve never seen a pint measuring glass promoting or advertising a particular business. The advertising ones just seem to be in this one size.
IC: Aside from the mother of that eBay seller who you mentioned earlier, have you encountered anybody else with this particular collecting specialty?
Fox: Nope. I’m in a midcentury modern barware group, but a lot of those people are more interested in the glasses that have metallic paint, that whole style. We have a few of those, but I don’t really like those as much as we like the commercial ones.
IC: Do you have a price ceiling? You won’t go above certain price?
Fox: Yeah. Usually $20 is pretty high, so I try to stay below that.
Paul here. That wrapped up the measuring glass part of our discussion. Here are more glasses from Elizabeth’s collection:
What a sensational collection! Please join me in thanking Elizabeth for sharing it with us (and for taking all those photos!).
After we talked about the glasses, Elizabeth and I chatted a bit more, as follows:
IC: What else do you collect besides glasses?
Fox: Old photos, especially pictures of people holding up fish that they’ve caught.
IC: Oooh, I like the specificity of that.
Fox: I also like pictures of people who are sitting in the kitchen or something, and you can see the calendar on the wall and the weird old coffee pot and the box of saltines and crackers or something like that. So it’s just like a slice of life. And then I like pictures of people partying, especially in bars. That’s a great genre.
I also collect fountain pens. I’ve been using those since I was in junior high, the cheap-ass ones. As I got older and had jobs and stuff, I started buying fancy ones. I don’t have super-collectible ones, but I have old ones that I’ve found at flea markets and places like that. And there’s a big fountain pen show here every summer, with people selling vintage pens and incredibly expensive Japanese pens that are inlaid with mother of pearl and things like that.
Fox [continued]: And then I also collect brass plumb bobs, because they’re so pretty.
IC [excitedly]: Ooh, that’s good! I like that.
Fox: I was just thinking that I haven’t seen one at a garage sale in a long time, so I don’t know if people are using the laser ones now and they’ve stopped using the metal ones.
IC: How do you have those displayed? Do you have them hanging all in a row?
Fox: I don’t currently have them displayed. When we lived in a house that had casement windows, I put nails all along the top and then hung them from that. But our current house doesn’t have those kind of windows, and I haven’t figured out a way to do it, so they’re just sitting in boxes.
And that was the end of the interview. I love how niche-specific Elizabeth’s collections are: not just glasses but measuring glasses; not just photos but photos of people with fish; not just hardware but plumb bobs; and so on.
Speaking of the plumb bobs, that strikes me as a particularly brilliant collecting obsession (not least because you frequently get to say, “plumb bobs,” which is such a pleasing term to vocalize). Maybe I can convince Elizabeth to do a deeper dive on that topic for us at some point down the road. Does anyone else out there collect plumb bobs? If so, I’d love to hear from you.
Also, if you have an unusual collection that you think might be good for the Collection Agency series, or if you know someone else with an interesting collection, please let me know. Thanks!
And Speaking of Measuring Glasses…
Elizabeth Fox wasn’t the only one who responded to my article about the Frigidaire measuring glass. I also heard from reader Kurt Rozek (brother of Norb Rozek, he of the pie-slicing manifesto), who had this to say:
I figured you’d appreciate this measuring glass that was my paternal grandmother’s. She worked at this commercial laundry company that would clean the Green Bay Packers’ uniforms back in the Lombardi era. She would fold Paul Hornung’s and Bart Starr’s pants, jerseys, socks, etc.
Whoa, super-cool! Thanks for sharing this excellent family heirloom, Kurt. And I’m sure Elizabeth would approve of the “HEMLOCK-7” telephone exchange!
Inconspicuous News Roundup
Every time I visit the assisted living facility where my mom lives, I walk past this office that for some reason has a giant fork mounted on the wall. The thing that always gets me is that the fork has five tines! Five-tined forks aren’t unheard of, but they’re pretty rare, and I’m pretty sure this is the only one I’ve ever seen in the wild.
Timed to coincide with yesterday’s celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, here’s a very interesting look at the design of the famous “I AM A MAN” protest poster from the 1968 Memphis sanitation worker strike.
I just learned that there’s a Facebook group devoted to the appreciation of peeling paint patterns.
Tired of holding an umbrella? Behold the drone umbrella.
Reader Matthew Algeo tipped me off to this post about the Holzhausen method of stacking firewood, which I’d never heard of before. It results in these really cool-looking circular arrangements:
Paul Lukas has been obsessing over the inconspicuous for most of his life, and has been writing about those obsessions for more than 30 years. You can contact him here.
Oh man that Katz cup takes me back to when I lived in KC. One of the old Katz stores has been in the news lately in hopes of preservation as well.
Yes, it is the old Citizens Bank weather ball from Flint! Love seeing a part of home leading the collection. Now do you remember the poem that goes with it?
When the weather ball is red,
higher temperatures ahead
When the weather ball is blue,
lower temperatures are due.
Yellow light in weather ball
means there’ll be no change at all.
When colors blink in agitation,
there’s going to be precipitation.
Still doesn't look right with other letters than CB.