Blue Satin Bird Nest Dish

BLUE SATIN GLASS BIRD ON NEST COVERED CANDY DISH - FOOTED LEAF AND BRANCH BASE, MOLDED MONOGRAM MARK, LIKELY WESTMORELAND A pretty and very collectible piece of figural pressed glass. This is a two-piece covered candy or trinket dish in cobalt-toned satin or frosted glass, made as a bird resting on a nest. The lid is a full-bodied songbird with an upswept tail, molded feather detail, and a pointed beak, sitting on an oval nest of woven twigs and grass. The base is a footed bowl cast as a nest ring wrapped in leaves and buds, standing on a spreading branch-and-leaf foot. The color is a deep blue that reads nearly cobalt in the thick areas and lightens to a soft pale blue where the glass thins out at the tail and the leaf tips, with the whole surface given a satin or acid-frosted finish that makes the molded feathering stand out. A small molded monogram-style mark is present inside the foot, and its form is consistent with the superimposed W over G cipher used by the Westmoreland Glass Company, though the mark is soft and out of focus in the photographs and cannot be read with certainty. Dishes like this were made in large numbers for the gift trade from the 1950s onward and are still bought by bird collectors, blue glass collectors, and Westmoreland collectors alike. There is a small break or flake at one bud or twig tip on the rim of the base with fresh exposed glass, and the tail tip of the bird should be examined closely in the photographs. Sold as one two-piece covered dish, lid and base. Description Lid - bird on nest - molded satin blue glass figural songbird, head turned slightly, pointed beak, incised eye, wing and breast feathering molded in relief, tail swept up and back and finished flat at the tip, resting on a shallow oval nest rim molded as woven twigs and grass that seats down into the base. The bird measures approximately 5.5 to 6 inches from beak to tail tip, the nest rim approximately 5 inches across, and the lid stands approximately 3 inches tall when set upside down. In every measuring frame the tape lies flat on the oak table across or in front of the piece rather than hooked on its edge, so all of these figures are close estimates only. Base - footed nest bowl - round satin blue glass bowl with the interior molded as the woven floor of a nest, the outside wrapped in overlapping leaves and small buds with several projecting bud or twig tips standing off the rim, rising on a short stem into a spreading foot cast as a branch with radiating leaves. Measures approximately 5 inches in diameter and approximately 4 to 4.5 inches tall to the rim per the tape-measure photographs, again with the tape resting on the table rather than hooked to the glass, so both figures are close estimates. No tape-measure photograph shows the dish assembled with the lid in place, so no overall assembled height is claimed. Marks - a single small raised monogram-style mark, roughly a quarter inch across, is molded into the underside of the foot at the center of the radiating leaf pattern. The mark reads as two overlapping capital letters and is consistent in form with a W superimposed over a G, but the photographs are soft and low-contrast at that point and the letters cannot be resolved with certainty. It is quoted here as an apparent WG-style cipher and nothing more. No other marking of any kind is visible on either piece - no paper label, no company name, no pattern number, no country of origin, and no date - so none is claimed. Photographed on a dark oak table against a white wall. Nothing else appears in these frames; the lid and base pictured are the entire lot. The Milwaukee tape measure is a photographic reference only and is NOT included. Attribution note The Westmoreland Glass Company of Grapeville, Pennsylvania operated from 1889 until 1984 and is one of the best-known American makers of figural covered animal dishes, including the long line of hen on nest and bird on nest covered dishes that collectors still chase today, according to published glass-mark references and the National Westmoreland Glass Collectors' Club. Westmoreland used a "W" inside a keystone as its mark from roughly the 1910s through the 1940s, and then developed the intertwined or superimposed "WG" mark, which appears on its glass from the later 1940s onward and is the mark collectors encounter most often, per the National Westmoreland Glass Collectors' Club and the glassbottlemarks.com reference on manufacturers' marks. If the mark inside this foot is in fact the WG cipher, the dish would date from that later marked period rather than the early keystone era - but that is a conditional statement resting on a blurry photograph and is NOT a claim. Two cautions belong here honestly. First, Westmoreland's molds were sold off and reused by other glassmakers after the company closed, and buyers were not always careful about removing the original marks, so a WG mark alone does not prove Westmoreland manufacture or a particular date,