Correction Sheets for Selected Publications

Cut-glass enthusiasts are indebted to Ken Howe for discovering the official name for Mt. Washington's patented pattern no. 18,959, a design by Frederick S. Shirley that has, for several decades, been called "Cushion", a name coined by A. C. Revi in the mid-1960s. In addition, Howe has provided a photocopy of the illustration that accompanies the patent's application. Several years ago, when this writer assembled his compilation of design patents granted during the brilliant period of American cut glass (1875-1920), patent no. 18,959's illustrations were not available from the Patent Office, and it was necessary for him to use the single drawing found in Revi (1965, p. 53), which is reproduced on the left. Howe's photocopy of the patent (now available at USPTO) shows that Shirley submitted two figures: Revi reproduces only fig. 1, fig. 2 is a profile of the patentee's design.

Howe also reproduces an ad that was placed by the Mt. Washington Glass Company in the 2 May 1889 issue of the Crockery and Glass Journal. It not only shows the patent's fig. 1, but it is here where one finds the true name of Shirley's pattern -- Mirror Block.

Unfortunately, at this point Howe "blots his copybook" as the English would say. Because he failed to double-check that the information available to him was correct (it was not!), he used incorrect information to arrive at a conclusion that is, not surprisingly, also incorrect. This is the problem:

Patent no. 18,959 ("Cushion") was incorrectly identified as the Block Diamond pattern by the Research & Information Committee of the ACGA (The Hobstar, Vol. 22, No. 10, p. 21). But it is clear that patent no. 18,959 can not possibly be Block Diamond because that pattern is generic, and as such would not qualify for a patent. Shirley realized this and carefully spells out the unique features of his design in the patent's specification, which reads in part: the essential feature of my invention being that the grooved lines give a swelled or rounded surface on all the side facets of the figures or pattern, this convex form producing a lens or mirror like effect to the design" (emphasis added). Nothing could be clearer, yet the Research Committee, and later Howe, have ignored Shirley's description. In doing so they have not only incorrectly identified patent no. 18,959 as the Block Diamond pattern but have also presented Frederick S. Shirley -- a highly respected glassman and agent for the Mt. Washington company at this time -- as ignorant of the difference between Block Diamond and his own design, an untenable situation.

Howe's conclusion: ". . . we now have two company names for this particular pattern" is obviously incorrect, but his article seems never to have been questioned. The correct conclusion, of course, is that there are two different Mt. Washington names for two entirely different, but similar, patterns.

The lesson learned from this exercise is to always double-check (i.e., question) "authority". In this case it was the ACGA's Research Committee that first made the error (but Howe gave it his blessing). In the case of the Russian pattern, it was Dorothy Daniel who first made the error (but many subsequent investigators agreed with her without question). The former case -- the present exercise -- is of relatively little importance, but the latter case has had major consequences.

Updated 13 Apr 2005