Call For Help

By Galen & Kathi Johnson

Have you ever gotten a text (or call) from someone looking for ID help? We do occasionally because people seem to think we know a lot of patterns (I guess maybe we do; we see a lot of glass when updating the Hooked on Carnival website).
Very frequently the hardest to identify are the simpler patterns. Some things don’t garner much respect and are sold in box lots at auctions, so they are not put in as available patterns. The plainest compotes can sometimes be very similar to other plain compotes and people haven’t taken the time to do research.
The most recent ‘call for help’ was to assist in identifying a compote. The embarrassing part of this is that we had taken a compote like this one to a ‘Texas gift exchange’ some years ago, and we thought we knew the name when we donated it, but we had since forgotten. We do see them every once in a while, in antique malls/shops, and we just breeze right on by, sometimes pointing and saying, ‘there’s another one’. Anyway, we were asked for help. We thought we remembered seeing it on Carnival 101, so we looked there. And ran into the same thing as always – it is NOT easy to search for a pattern when you don’t know the name. In desperation, we texted Gary Sullivan (who DOES know a lot of patterns!). And he knew that it is called Banded Flute – Imperial (and that it WAS on Carnival 101).

Sure enough, there is a very nice article written by Diane Fry about this compote. She stated that since the Butler Bros Advertisement also had a Poinsettia pitcher, Freefold vase, Oval and Round rose bowl, two Star of David bowls, the Columbia vase, as well as Plain Jane and Smooth Rays bowls, it could only be Imperial. They saw one in the late Bob Gallo’s room at the 1998 HOACGA Convention and Bob called it Banded Flute.
The exterior pattern is made up of 14 vertical flutes, above them are 3 horizontal bands (smaller, larger, smaller) with the top above the bands totally plain. It is about 4 ¼” tall with a 6” top measurement. All of them found to date have been 6 ruffle.

Here is the original advertisement reproduced from the 1910 Butler Bros Wholesale catalog.