Item 50

Price realized:  $55

View:  Main (Large)  View 2 (Large)  View 3 (Large)  View 4 (Large) Item: 50  Description: CD 162 Brookfield (240) Blue Blizzard. Today’s Forecast: 100-Percent Chance of Snow in this insulator. All those white specks in the bottom-lit photos of View 1 and View 2 are white impurities in the blue colored glass. In the back-lit pictures of View 3 and View 4, those particles appear black because light doesn’t pass through them. Our consignor acquired this piece at last summer’s ShyLynn Ranch swap meet in British Columbia. Snowy Brookfields in a half-dozen CD styles are found in that area. Lee Brewer has supplied us with additional information about snowy Brookfields. He tells us that the glass industry learned that making glass with a higher CaO content created tougher glass. But there was a limit to how much CaO could be added. Morgan Brookfield invented ways to increase the CaO. Lee says Brookfield's April 20, 2015 patent resulted in blue insulators and the accidentally snowy blue ones when kaolin and glass cullet were mixed in improper proportions. (Sometimes snowy insulators are the result of fire brick particles, but Lee says kaolin glass is the culprit for this style.)  Grade B-Plus: Whether because of an impact or just because some impurities are on the surface of the glass, there’s a small patch of “whiteness” on the side of the dome. There’s a small open bubble with adjacent flaking on the inside edge of the base visible as a shadow to the bottom far right in View 2 and View 4. There are also two nibbles on the inner skirt. Estimate: $75 - $100  Open: $45 Price realized:  $55