It can take years and years to build a thoughtful, harmonious, and satisfying collection. Or one day you walk into your neighborhood thrift store and there's a fully-realized collection just waiting for you!
When my friend Crystal was little, her grandma collected grapes. ("Grapes and dolls!", she laughed.) Sadly, her grandma passed away and her collections were dispersed and sold. Crystal decided years later that she would like to start building her own grape collection, so she put the word out to friends to Please Call Her if they came across any awesome ones.
Soon after, she found the gold glass grapes with all the tendrils for only $3 at a thrift store. (Similar bunches often sell for $60-$75.) There were no new additions for awhile, until she happened upon someone's impressive collection on a routine trip to Thrift Town . I like to think of Crystal delightedly carrying 25 pounds of glass grapes home to her apartment!
- The unusual bronze grapes are acrylic, and the green ones are another especially large glass example. The blue & green bunch is homemade, from an acrylic grape-making kit! I could not for the life of me find any make-your-own-grapes kits to link to, but please let us know if you find one. Crystal could tell these are homemade because one grape has glitter, one has air-bubbles, and one has green and blue acrylic mixed together.
- The small blue grapes are the oldest — she doesn't know exactly when they were made, but they remind me of some of my grandma's perfume bottles and such from the 1940s. Any experts out there? The grapes themselves are shaped rather like doorknobs, as if the maker had never actually seen grapes before but was doing their best. The little clear glass leaf is particularly lovely.
- The prize of Crystal's grape collection is, of course, the little bunch of raspberries. She's never seen another example online or in real-life. Not are they incredibly rare, they're adorable, like giant gummies.
And so the search continues. If Casanova on Valencia ever closes, those giant glass grape lights will have a good home. Any unbelievable collecting jackpots you've hit?
Images: Tess Wilson
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I actually used to make these when I was in Junior High. The local craft store had glass molds, imagine a small clear glass Christmas ball with a much wider opening on the top. You mixed cast resin up (putting color in too), poured it into the opening of the molds, stuck in the end of a wire, then propped them up and waiting for them to harden. At that point, you broke away the glass mold (the fun part) and used the wires to attach them to the piece of wood. Easy and fairly fun but rather soon you run out of people to whom to give the grapes as gifts. I think that there is still a frozen spill of cast resin on the floor of my parents' basement.
When I was a kid I collected seashells. My Dad bought me this really great shell at a garage sale, and when he told them I collected seashells, they went inside and came back with a case full of the most amazing shell collection. They were from Europe, so a lot of the shells were unlike anything I've ever come across in North America. They GAVE me the collection - refused to take any money for it. They just wanted someone to have it who would enjoy and appreciate it. I did - and I still have them all.
http://www.swankydigs.blogspot.com/
When I was a kid my great-grandma had grapes like these hanging near her stone fireplace. They had a light inside, and functioned as the coolest lamp my younger self had ever seen. When I asked about them, my dad told me my great-aunt made them when she was younger. I think that aunt eventually reclaimed them when my gram passed away, but I desperately wish I had that grape lamp for myself.
The gold grapes look exactly like the glass grapes I have sitting on my coffee table, except mine are blue and green. They belonged to my grandmother, and when she decided to sell her house and move into a retirement home, she gave them to me. I absolutely love them; they remind me of her, and I think they are pretty unique.
I remember my childhood babysitter having a green bunch of glass grapes on her coffee table...
Thanks for the memories!
my grandparents have a ton of these glass grapes hanging around their house in los angeles. i swear their house hasn't been updated since the early seventies. they even still have the green shag carpet in their living room!
Ebay has a plethora of glass grapes in any color you could imagine!
About 12-yrs ago I fell in love with a ceramic Buddha 'thing' at a thrift store, not knowing what it was, exactly, but loving it. I collected a few more, at random, then found a box of 10 (or so) at a garage sale - soon after the garage sale score, I found out they were cocktail mugs from Benihana...and was even more excited about them! I've since been given a couple as gifts, have even passed-up a few in thrift stores because they were duplicates. It's the only thing I've ever collected and I really, really love them -- all 15.
Here's a blog about 'em (not by me):
http://benihanatikimugs.blogspot.com/2008/04/geisha-mug.html
These were gawdawful when they first came out and are still gawdawful. Are plastic covers on sofas the next "collectible"?
ebrown, I'm with you. Wouldn't take one on a silver platter as a gift -- horrors! ;^)
I was a bunch of grapes once for Halloween, when I was 8 years old. I wore purple tights and my mom stuck a bunch of purple balloons all over me...wider at the top...decreasing in number down, past my knees. I couldn't fit into the car all dressed up like that, to go to the neighborhood halloween pageant, so we called a nearby farmer who brought his pickup truck so I could stand in the back of it while he drove me there. Thank goodness I won.
Every time I see these things they always look cloudy and dirty. I never gave them a second thought. I didn't realize they were such a hot collectible, but people collect everything and anything I suppose.
I LOVE glass grapes! I have a small collection myself. I did once happen upon a very ornate chandelier made of them at the antique store near my house. I liked it and all of it's kitschy glory...but my husband was appalled that I had even given it a second look... so he would not let me get it hahaha. I still regret not getting it anyway.
@iampeas --
Reminds me of the costume contest one year during the "Sing Along Sound of Music":
After all the VonTrapp Families, Marias, Nuns, Evil Countesses, Nazis and such were brought on stage - there was finally one fellow dressed up in a costume of what appeared to be a giant bunch of grapes made from purple balloons...
...when asked by the MC what character he was dressed as, he responded "I'm the Lonely Goat Turd".
He won.
Wow. Can't believe I'm seeing these again. My grandpa used to make these as well as stained glass windows. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!
I used to work for a VERY high end interior design firm (beds start at $100K), which in part specialized in high glam hollywood regency. The owner had an auto-alert with ebay for acrylic/glass grapes. She'd buy them for $5-$20 and we'd sell then in the store for $75-$150 min. They were one of the most popular items.
the biggest glass grapes I ever saw were in August 2008 at the Copia museum in Napa, California!!! here is a link to the grapes via the sculptor's page.
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~mitchlaplante/
unfortunately when i googled, I found that the Copia museum has since closed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COPIA
I have a bowl of grapes that my grandparents owned, except I found a big cluster of orange and white grapes that I liked better. Since I don't want a grape collection, the bowl of glass grapes will go to my aunt who happens to collect them.