The company behind the glass

New Martinsville Glass had been running in West Virginia since around 1901 and went through hard times in the 1930s. In 1944 new ownership took over and the stockholders voted to rename it Viking Glass. The new direction was deliberate: away from conservative crystal and toward brightly coloured, Scandinavian-influenced modern glass. Asymmetrical pulls, long swooping curves, crackle finishes.

It worked well enough that Viking and its Rainbow Art Glass connection were represented in the Corning Museum’s Glass 1959 exhibition. In 1951 Viking bought a number of Paden City and Westmoreland moulds, which matters later when you are trying to work out why a shape looks older than the colour.

The plant struggled through the early 1980s against imports and changing taste, and closed mid-decade. Kenneth Dalzell, formerly of Fostoria, bought the property and reopened it as Dalzell-Viking in 1987. That operation ran until 1998.

Start with the fact that there is no mark

This trips up more people than anything else in the category. Viking glass is not marked. There is no moulded signature, no acid stamp, no impressed logo. Pieces left the factory with a foil or paper label and those labels do not survive washing-up.

So a seller telling you a piece is “signed Viking” either has an unusually lucky surviving label, or is describing something else. And the absence of a mark is not evidence against Viking — it is the normal condition.

What you can do instead: check the base for label residue, a faint ring or adhesive haze. Then work the colour and the form against catalogue references.

The Epic line

If you only learn one Viking thing, learn this one. In the early 1960s Viking added smaller, stylised glass animals to a menagerie that already included heavy realistic figures from the late 1930s and the swan bowls that went back to the 1920s. The Epic animals are stretched and elongated — long-tailed birds, cats with drawn-out bodies, dogs, egrets, ducks, fish. The Epic cat is one of the most recognisable objects in mid-century American glass.

The Dalzell reissue trap

Here is the one that costs people money. When Dalzell-Viking reopened the plant, it had the original Viking mould inventory — and it reissued animal figures and other items from those moulds. Same shape. Genuinely from the same mould.

But often in colours Viking never used. That is the tell. Dalzell went after 1990s taste — magenta, deep red, cobalt, yellow — and also reintroduced some Fostoria moulds alongside. So a piece can be mould-correct and still be from 1992 rather than 1965.

Which means colour is doing double duty: it dates the piece and it separates Viking from Dalzell-Viking. Learn the period palette and the problem mostly solves itself.

What to check

• Base for label residue. A ring, haze or adhesive shadow is real evidence even with the label gone.
• Colour against the period palette. A 1990s colour on a 1960s form means Dalzell-Viking.
• Epic proportions. Stretched and stylised, not realistic.
• Base finish. Look at how the base was finished — ground, polished, or left as-is — and compare against known examples of the form.
• Weight and clarity. Viking glass feels substantial. The colour should be clean and even, not cloudy.
• Chips on the extremities. Ears, tails and beaks on the animals; rims on the vases.

From the shop

Viking Owl Fairy Lamp Inspired Keychain and Figures

See it →

• “Signed Viking” in a listing. Ask what they are looking at. Viking did not sign its glass.
• Confident attribution without a label. Most honest Viking listings say “attributed”. Certainty that nobody can have is a warning.
• Dalzell pieces sold at Viking prices. Same mould, later decade. Check the colour.
• Rainbow Art Glass sold as Viking. Related, and Viking continued Rainbow animal figures, but they are not the same thing and collectors price them separately.