Crown Crystal

This listing reminded me that I keep finding glassware in the records and I must check it out now.

http://www.trademe.co.nz/antiques-collectables/art-deco-retro/kitchenware/auction-945773740.htm

Trade Me auction 945773740

This is what I told the seller. Let's see if they use the info.

"These glasses were designed by Keith Mahy for Crown Crystal, a subsidiary of AHI in 1972. The design called Anker won the Designmark award that year. The name was changed to Java in 1974. Crown Crystal was nothing to do with Crown Lynn."

Crown Crystal came to NZ from Australia and in their heyday were a major employer in Christchurch.

Keith Mahy was the proprietor of Burning Issues Gallery in Whangarei.
He died last year.

Later ...
All fixed!

Just out of curiosity please, am I correct in saying that Kaaru glass was made at Crown crystal? We have been helping to tidy up at a neighbours place and one item I have packaged up for the owner is a tall coloured lidded jar, with a Kaaru sticker on it. I have never seen anything like it before.

Yes.

Angela Bowey has an illustration of a set of "Regis" shape glasses branded Kaaru as illustration 2.6 in her digital book "New Zealand Glass 2nd Edition" (Kindle). A page number would probably be meaningless, location 339 would get you there. Angela writes that many of the CC drink ware were sold as Kaaru and that the brand was a "mainstay of the company for many years". It looks as though the brand extended beyond drink ware.

Angela, Dr Bowey, has written several books on glass and runs the websites  http://www.glassencyclopedia.com/ and http://www.glass.co.nz and more.

She has been invited a number of times to talk at the Whangarei Antiques Club, where her most recent talk on Vaseline glass was the best attended in recent memory. Nicole and I enjoyed her company for dinner before the meeting and while here she finally managed to have a look at my Dad's antique glass collection.

As for Crown Crystal, besides the decanters https://www.newzealandpottery.net/t1136-jeremy-collects-stuff-crown-crystal-decanters#24651 I have almost complete sets of Anker and Regis glasses in all sizes. Unfortunately I don't have the Expo70 ones.

Thelma, wrt your vases the only colours I am familiar with are clear, amber, and smoked but I see a blue vase in one of the photos in Angela's book. Angela did not really address decorative glassware. If possible could you post a pic of them.

Will do Jeremy. Incidentally, I have a very small collection of Crown Crystal vases of one shape only. I found one with a sticker on the bottom and it started from there. I have clear, amber, green frosted, blue frosted and keep hoping I might find another colour to balance out those! You are probably familiar with the small fluted ribbed vases, they are pretty common!

Almost forgot to say, I bought two sets of tall parfait glasses at a market the other day. Boxed and made by AHI. Nothing special about them but I just wanted them.

This is the container. It is a faint purple colour. Approx 35cm with lid. It is filthy from sitting in a box in a haybarn for many years. I will see what the owner wants to do with it when he is down from Auckland next.

Crown Crystal is a company I would love to know more about. It's not surprising that it is often associated with Crown Lynn. I have heard from two separate people that Crown Lynn had some ownership interest in it at some stage (I cannot confirm this myself). Of course, even if this is true to any degree, it does not make it a glass version of CL. However, Douglas Lloyd Jenkins' account in 'A Century of New Zealand Design' (p. 236-238) certainly gives the sense that there were many complementarities. His narrative on Crown Crystal interweaves CL so deeply into the story that one comes away with a sense that they were some sort of glass-ceramic Siamese twins even if this was not the intention, so it is hard to blame people for linking them. I have two pieces of the art glass (non-commercial?) from the late 1960s-early 1970s which are as decorative, 'mod' and eyecatching as any of the Italian Murano for which they are often mistaken. They do deserve a higher profile.

I've just been surfing as I thought I may have been mistaken.
Some google links give the impression of an association but when you get there there isn't one.

With the corporate activities of the 1980s a connection seems likely but a history of AHI that I looked at makes no mention of CL or Ceramco.

Various dates given for the factory closing are 1987 and 1989 which seems more than coincidental, but I think it is more indicative of what Rogernomics did to the country.

CC NZ started as an offshoot of CC Australia in 1950. CC Oz has a much longer history and a much greater range of wares. Some of the early NZ work parallels that in Oz.

CC NZ were also onetime local manufacturers of Pyrex, and so some Pyex decorations are unique to NZ.

I have no knowledge of CC NZ prior to AHI, whenever that was, so somewhere in the deep dark past there may have been some sort of "relationship" between the companies, CL and CC.

Crikey Thelma, that's the dirtiest piece of glass I've ever seen. Do you watch Antiques' Roadshow? Andy McConnell would be wagging his finger

If you saw where it was stored, You would be amazed that it has survived unbroken! I am sure it will clean up well, just do not want to risk ruining the label at this stage.

As I have skipped over the glassware in the Portage Museum archives, now I had to check it out and here are a couple of photos.

These are from the same timeframe as the Royal Grafton China as you can see from the second photo which has both. Glassware was also sold in the Crown Lynn shops as I've seen price lists, though I have to find them again.

NZ Womans Weekly Adverts Sept 25 1972

I stumbled across this conversation whilst researching Kaaru Glassware, made by Crown Crystal Glass. I'm trying to compile a kind of directory of patterns/shapes of their glassware. What I was hoping to find was a copy of their old catalogue.
Have a look at my Facebook page 'Kaaru Glassware Enthusiasts of NZ'. You are welcome to contribute any information you might have.
Jody.

I came by this set recently and started research today on Venzia, Crown Crystal, ChCh NZ. Interesting to read this business came to NZ via Australia in the 50s. Has anyone seen a set like this before? Very retro and very cool. I'd like to give it to my Dad for his 90th birthday, he's still playing golf after all these years.