The First Leg of the Journey

About October of 1989 I met some folks at the Bakersfield Antique Show who collected Fry glass in various forms. Sometime after the meeting, I received a call from them asking if I would be interested in purchasing some Fry insulators they may be acquiring. They were in the process of purchasing a number of items which had come from an auction in Pennsylvania and the insulators were part of the lot.

In November of 1990, I purchased several of the pieces including a CD 164.4 opalescent, 229.6 blackglass, and a 301.2 opalescent. The rarest of the lot was the 301.2 but, unfortunately, the entire top was missing and the pinhole was exposed where the crown once was. As a CD collector, however, I wasn’t about to bark at the condition when, at the time, there were only three known specimens and this was the only opalescent piece of the three.

Photo by Ray Lanpher taken at Fry auction in Pennsylvania c. 1988

I subsequently wrote a letter to Fry expert Ray Lanpher, of North Attleboro, Mass., to try to determine the relative rarity of the pieces I had just acquired. Ray graciously responded with a five page letter with the cumulative results of the research he had collected. Along with the letter he forwarded some photos of miscellaneous Fry insulators including a Polaroid photo of my 301.2! Ray explained that he had seen the piece at an auction about two years before (c.1988) but didn’t buy it due to the relatively high price and poor condition. He didn’t know who purchased the piece and lost track of it until I wrote him about it. I found it to be a small world when I wrote a person in Massachusetts about an insulator I bought in California and he had a picture of the very same piece!

About one year after acquiring the Fry, I began to sell a large portion of my insulator collection as the house I was moving into simply couldn’t accommodate the 9,500 pieces I had accumulated. Due to space considerations, the power collection, including the 301.2, was the first to be sold. Fellow CD collector Butch Haltman (Cathedral City, California) purchased the topless piece as he did not have any specimen of that style.

A perfect match -- the top and bottom of CD 301.2 reunited

The Second Leg of the Journey

Grant and Dona Salzman (West Sacramento, California) are avid Fry glass collectors. Within their overall Fry collection they have attempted to acquire insulator specimens as well as the wide range of other ware the company produced.

Through contacts in the insulator hobby, Grant acquired the name of the individual who was the original finder of the vast bulk of Fry insulators, all of which reportedly came from the company dump. In about 1992, Grant was successful in acquiring a CD 301.2 Fry insulator in opalescent. Unfortunately, the insulator was missing the top (is this starting to sound familiar?)

In 1993, Grant met “Hank” Fry, the grandson of Henry Clay Fry (Company founder) at a Fry Convention in Sewickley, Pennsylvania. On the basis of the friendship which resulted, Grant and Dona visited Hank in Texas on their way to the 1994 NIA National Convention in Houston. While videotaping the man’s collection, Grant was shocked to find a top to an opalescent CD 301.2 sitting on one of the shelves along with other pieces of Fry glass. After an exchange of gifts of other types of Fry glassware, Grant acquired the top to the insulator. As a sidebar, the man also had a number of specimens and pieces of Fry insulators out in his rock garden, most of which he dug himself at the factory dump, including the top to the 301.2.

The Final Reunion

While at the NIA convention, Grant just happened to be telling the story to, you guessed it, Butch Haltman. He showed Butch the top he had acquired and Butch was very interested. Since Grant couldn’t be sure the top wasn’t to his own specimen, however, he first took it home to check against his own 301.2. The piece did not match Grant’s specimen so he shipped it to Butch. The piece was compared with Butch’s specimen and it was an exact match! Dwayne Anthony subsequently repaired the piece, a photo of which is shown in this article.

This incredible course of these independent journeys can be most appropriately described through the following chart. While I’ve heard of pieces being found in the woods years after a different part was found, I’m not sure if any other split specimen has ever taken such a circuitous route before being reunited. If there is such a story, I’m sure we would all like to read about it.

Meanwhile, Grant is hoping Butch (or anyone else) will return the favor and find the top to his 301.2!

The reunion trip of the CD301.2