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Reprint from The Hobstar, July, 1986

Whimsies
By Carl U. Fauster

Harold Newman's book, An Illustrated Dictionary of Glass, does not include the them "Whimsey".  However, in the glass house, it was a common word understood to mean an item made by a craftsman on his own time and which he could take out of the factory without objection by management.  Blowers were permitted to form such pieces during their lunch break or if the glass coming from the pot was not workable and the shop's production was temporarily delayed. 

The most common whimsies were canes made to be carried when the members of the American Flint Glass workers Union marched in the Labor Day Parade.  Other whimsies were hats, paperweights, pipes, spittoons and rolling pins - most all of which were forms that did not require additional work by cutters or engravers.

Items that would be considered whimsies that involved cutting or engraving are quite rare.   In searching through museum and private collections with which we are familiar we discovered three examples of solid-block type paperweights.  Two such examples were exhibited in the 1968 Toledo Museum exhibition, "Libbey Glass, a Tradition of 150 Years."  One depicted a book (Fig 1) engraved with a floral motif and inscribed "Life of W.W. Pike".  MR. Pike was the husband of Mary May Leighton, daughter of John H. Leighton, Sr.  The book was made about 1865 and measured 4 inches in length.  The second book (Fig 2), 5 inches in length, in the 1968 exhibition was one engraved by Louis F. Vaupel, inscribed in German Lettering, "Secrets of Nature", and was made about 1870.  Both of these were one-of-a-kind cut and engraved whimsies.  (See Libbey Glass Since 1818, page 219, by Carl Fauster)

A third engraved whimsy is another solid-block weight made by a famous engraver of the 20th century, Joseph Hockie, who engraved glass at Libbey in the 1920's and 1930's and later at an Indiana factory.  The engraving on this weight (Fig. 3) is a small dog looking at an open book, the pages of which are "A-B" on the left page and "C-D" on the right.  As a novelty, the Hockie whimsy is expertly engraved with extra fine detail representing work of the highest skilled craftsman.