GETTING TO THE “BOTTOM” OF PERSIAN GARDEN BOWLS – GREG WARHOL
I’m sure most carnival glass collectors like the Dugan Persian Garden pattern. I have around 15 examples of this intricate design myself, running from small ruffled berry bowls to a gorgeous chop plate.
Several years ago, I did some research on the bases of Persian Garden ten ruffle fruit bowls, large six and eight ruffle bowls, and large ICS bowls. What precipitated my research was realizing that some of these large bowls would not fit squarely and securely on the ruffled Big Basketweave bases used for the fruit bowls. Many tended to slide to one side or the other, and sit crooked. If you have experienced this problem, I have the answer. What I ended up discovering after examining several dozen bowls over a two year span, is that Dugan used molds with four distinctly different outer base designs, and only one of these designs will allow a bowl to properly fit on a base.
At first I thought only the ten ruffle fruit bowl would have the proper base design to accept the fruit bowl bases, but alas no, there also exist six and eight ruffle, as well as ICS bowls with the molded base allowing proper fit. I have never seen a ten ruffle bowl without the proper base design, or a chop plate with the proper base design to accept a fruit bowl base, but they may exist.
I hand drew the four bowl base designs, and recently scanned the results into my computer. The drawings are crude, but adequate enough to see the differences, and I have included them here for all to see. They are marked ‘A’ through ‘D’, with example ‘B’ being the only base design that will properly seat a bowl on the Big Basketweave base. These differences were discussed at length a few years ago with member Ingrid Spurrier, who is a huge Persian Garden fan, but I never did supply her with my drawings, so here you go Ingrid. The Big Basketweave bases are occasionally found out-of-round, or with a diameter too large to fit into an example ‘B’ bowl base, but that is another story all together. Comments are encouraged.
**From the HoC team: Special thanks to Greg AND the Tampa Bay Carnival Glass Club for sharing this article from a 2008 TBCGC newsletter!