Young takes listeners on ride via Millersburg Glass
Matt Young's fascination with Millersburg Glass began because of his grandmother. She introduced him to the carnival glass, and Young took members of the Millersburg Glass Association on a trip back to Grandma's house during his talk at the annual meeting.
When he was a young lad of 13 years, Matt Young loved visiting with his grandparents, Jean and Bud Fulmer.
Like many grandparents’ homes, the Fulmer house was filled with relics and mementos from eras gone by, brimming with items that meant something to them.
In sharing his memories of his grandmother at the Millersburg Glass Association 10-year anniversary meeting in Berlin on Oct. 7, Young said he wanted those in attendance to gain insight into what he experienced all those years ago when Millersburg Glass was introduced to him.
While the display pieces he brought with him for the talk during the meeting weren’t high-priced, highly sought pieces of glass, each represented a part of his collection that takes him back to his time with his grandparents and how his grandma’s zeal for collecting Millersburg Glass formed his passion for following suit.
“Aren’t those memories a big part of why we do what we do as collectors?” Young said.
Young’s trip began the same way many young boys’ memories begin, with a fish story. However, his fish story varies from that of a boy’s fishing venture with his granddad on some golden pond in the early morning mist.
No, Young’s fish story was one of a glass fish on a bowl for which his grandmother forked out $1,200 decades ago.
“Grandma loved collecting glass, and she went to an auction one day and someone really ticked her off,” Young said. “She and this guy got in a bidding war over this one particular piece, and ever since then at family gatherings, I would hear this story come up where everyone would say, ‘I can’t believe she spent $1,200 on a fish.’”
It would become a family mantra over the years, but soon the story would fade into the background for Young. He would grow into adulthood and soon built a home for himself near Loudonville during the uranium era. Uranium captured his fancy, and he began purchasing uranium carnival glass.
Through his grandmother, he slowly began to recognize the beauty and value of carnival glass, especially that created by John Fenton’s Millersburg Glass Company.
That reignited his memory of that $1,200 fish.
Once Jean became too old to continue her hobby, she and Young would spend time discussing the hobby, and during one conversation, she told Young to go to the top of the staircase in her home to the bathroom, where he would find a uranium cracker jar, which she gave him.
That old relic became very special to Young, and talk soon turned to that $1,200 fish dish.
Young began to explore his grandmother’s collection, and still a novice, he began looking for any piece of glass in the shape of a fish. He came up empty, not realizing the fish in question was in the design of a bowl.
He called the search for the piece good “youth stew,” which prompted him to do an internet search that might help him identify it.
That moment he began to understand the value of Millersburg Glass and that the fish piece didn’t look like a fish. His return trip to his grandmother’s house fleshed out a fish dish, which he assumed was the $1,200 piece.
Soon his grandmother decided it was time to sell off her estate and downsize, and Young said that’s fine, but she in no way could sell off her glass collection. Young said he would buy it from her.
Young said her reply was priceless, with his mother asking, “Can you afford it?”
Several months later she passed away, and after the estate was settled, Young found out he was going to be the recipient of all his grandmother’s carnival glass.
Young would later revisit the cabinet that houses his grandmother’s glass and quickly realized the display contained not one but many fish pieces.
Back to square one, he had no idea which was the $1,200 piece of glass.
As he began to explore the glass, he had no idea what the value of the glass was, only that somewhere there existed a $1,200 fish piece.
His exploration in pulling out glass from the cabinet began with a famed Millersburg courthouse bowl. Then came a green trout and fly fish dish. Was that the one his family had spoken of so often? A peacock sauce bowl followed suit, and much to his surprise, when he turned it over, it was rare blue glass. A rays and ribbon bowl, another peacock bowl with a radium finish and many more pieces followed, and Young said he had no idea what he was looking at. Then came more fish.
As the day waned and the final glass pieces were being taken out and recorded, Young pulled out a 3-in-1 satin trout and fly fishbowl. It wasn’t the most dazzling piece, but it is one he won’t ever let go.
That’s because behind the bowl was a receipt for $1,200 from Acker Auctioneering, the piece that led him to become a fanatic of Millersburg Glass.
Later he would find out his grandmother owned a second cabinet full of Millersburg Glass. He then realized why when asked about how much carnival glass she had invested in, his grandmother would always reply, “You have no idea.”
“I started my collection through my grandma, and while I’ve found some really nice pieces, none will ever replace hers because they are filled with special memories,” Young said.