Heart of glass Pyrex to start its 100th birthday party in Charleroi
A set of Amish Butterprint Pyrex, a popular choice among the brand’s fans who shop at Tim’s Secret Treasures antique store in Charleroi.
Collectible items produced at Corning before the Charleroi plant was sold to World Kitchen are on display at Tim’s Secret Treasures in Charleroi.
Rhonda Jaquay, an owner of Tim’s Secret Treasures in Charleroi, holds an old glass-blowing pipe once used in one of the borough’s glass factories.
An assortment of Pyrex casserole dishes at Tim’s Secret Treasures antique store in Charleroi
Glass collector LaVerne Williams of North Charleroi has a pair of World Kitchen signature measuring cups that have never been taken out of their packaging.
An unusual and old Pyrex coffee percolator owned by glass collector LaVerne Williams of North Charleroi
Former Corning Glass employee LaVerne Williams of North Charleroi flips through a Pyrex catalog beside a table where she has arranged her large collection of the glassware. In the background is her collection of MacBeth-Evans glass produced in Charleroi, where World Kitchen now manufactures Pyrex.
A group of glass workers at an unknown factory in Charleroi, circa 1910
The George MacBeth Glass Factory can be seen in the distance in this photo taken in Charleroi around 1900. The buildings eventually were sold to World Kitchen, which now manufactures Pyrex.
CHARLEROI – World Kitchen boasts that its signature heat-resistant glassware known as Pyrex can be found in nearly every kitchen in the United States, and that’s an understatement in the houses near where its plant is located in Charleroi.
The home of former Corning Glass employee LaVerne Williams in North Charleroi, for example, is among those whose kitchens are brimming with vintage Pyrex mixing bowls, casserole dishes, cups and pie plates.
“My mother and aunts worked there,” said Williams, 85, while discussing how she came to collect so much Pyrex, a brand that is celebrating its 100th birthday this year.
“My sister Laura worked there. It’s family,” she said.
Charleroi was established as a glass-making boom town between 1890 and 1892 and was once home to five glass factories, said Nikki Sheppick, chairman of the Charleroi Area Historical Society.
George A. MacBeth owned one that merged with the Evans Glass Co. in 1899, Sheppick said. MacBeth-Evans grew to acquire Hamilton Glass in 1918, and it eventually merged in 1936 with Corning, which already had invented Pyrex.
“From those seeds, a vast glass industry came into being, that at its height employed over 1,400 men and over 700 women who plied their trade in diverse ways,” Sheppick said.
“The Charleroi plant produced record numbers of Corning Pyrex mixing bowls and many other utilitarian items that became the things of dreams to multitudes of housewives,” she said.
The Pyrex brand resulted by chance in 1915 when a Corning scientist gave his wife, Bessie Littleton, sawed-off bottoms of battery jars to use as casserole dishes in place of those she had broken.
The Charleroi plant at 100 Eighth St. eventually was sold in 1998 to World Kitchen, a company that now employs 350 people at the Pyrex plant.
Due to the sheer volume of Pyrex that has been sold in the Mon Valley, much of it has found its way to area antiques stores, and its value continues to increase, especially among collectors of the modern-American style of the 1950s.
“I sell a lot of the early American Pyrex to people who come home for funerals,” said Rhonda Jaquay, an owner of Tim’s Secret Treasures antique store in Charleroi.
“They stop here because they want to take a piece of Charleroi home with them,” Jaquay said, adding that many of her customers are drawn to Pyrex because they have relatives who once worked at Corning.
“They love those casserole dishes,” she said.
Williams, who worked in purchasing for Corning before quitting when she became pregnant in 1962, said she just bought up different Pyrex pieces over the years.
“Corning had a store in the basement. We didn’t even get a discount,” Williams said.
Sheppick said housewives in the 1950s also loved Pyrex because it doesn’t break easily.
“My mother loved this stuff, and we lived in northeastern Indiana,” Sheppick said.
World Kitchen will host a Pyrex celebration in downtown Charleroi on Saturday, using a giant replica of its iconic measuring cup as the centerpiece of the party. The plastic novelty holds 3,040 cups, weighs 65 pounds and is 4 feet tall. The cup will travel around the country and be returned to the borough after the celebration ends.
The events will be held from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Fifth Street between McKean and Fallowfield avenues, and at Magic City Square at Fifth Street and McKean Avenue. Charleroi Borough Manager Donn Henderson said World Kitchen will have Pyrex items available to purchase during the celebration and a display on the brand’s history.
The borough will sponsor a first-come, first-served free pancake breakfast at the Market House, 423 McKean Ave., along with some entertainment.
The party also will mark the borough’s 125th birthday, and a video message from the mayor of Charleroi, Belgium, will be played.