My first piece of carnival glass was an amethyst Northwood Grape and Cable Banana Boat.  I bought it at a garage sale for $5 and was pretty sure that the lady had swindled me. It was a few years later that I became enamoured with Carnival glass and began building a collection.

Harry & Carl Northwood grew up in England.  They learned the glass trade from their father, John, who carved cameo glass and was art director at the Stevens & Williams firm in West Midlands, England.

Harry worked for Hobbs-Brockunier Glass Co. in Wheeling and at LaBelle Glass Co. in Bridgeport, Ohio in the early 1880s/ He started his own companies during the 1880s and 1890s in Martins Ferry, Ohio; Ellwood City, Pa.; and Indiana, Pa.

The underlined “N” in a circle is the most frequently seen mark in classic era Carnival. Not all Northwood patterns carry the mark:

Northwood produced their first piece of carnival glass in 1908. The firm eventually went bankrupt in 1925 never quite getting back on track after Harry Northwood’s death in 1918.