The Viking owl glimmer: the seven-inch bird that outlived the glasshouse that made it

Viking Glass spent twenty-five years making some of the best colored glass in West Virginia, and the piece everybody remembers is a seven-inch owl with a candle in its stomach. The owl deserves it.

The company behind the owl

The factory at New Martinsville, West Virginia, opened in 1901 as the New Martinsville Glass Company, burned and flooded in 1907, was rebuilt by that October, and spent the 1920s and 30s turning out pressed tableware in patterns like Moondrops, Radiance and Janice. In 1944 it was restructured and renamed Viking Glass, and from about 1951 it did the thing it is remembered for: heavy, hand-finished glass in saturated color. Evergreen, amber, ebony, cobalt, sky blue and ruby came first. Amethyst, charcoal, harvest gold and olive followed in 1953. By 1964 the working palette had been cut down to seven colors, and those seven are the ones a mid-century collector recognizes on sight: Amberina, Avocado, Bluenique, Crystal, Honey, Persimmon and Ruby.

The big product line through all of this was Epic, in production from 1956 to 1975, which is where most of Viking's sculptural, free-form modern glass lived. The owl came in near the end of that run, when the company had the colors dialed in and was looking for shapes to pour them into.

One thing the owl was not, as far as we can find, is a Sears Wish Book item. People remember it that way because it looks like one. Viking sold through gift shops, department stores and its own trade catalogs, which is why its catalog pages, not a Sears scan, are the primary record.

What a glimmer is

The fairy lamp is a Victorian idea. In the 1880s, an English candle maker named Clarke sold a squat, short-burning candle under the "Fairy" name and a two-part glass shade to burn it in, pitched as a safer bedside light than a bare flame. The form was simple: a base that held the candle, a dome that sat on top of it and diffused the light. It stayed in production, in one hand or another, for the next hundred years.

Viking took the form and renamed it. In its catalogs these were glimmers, a family that included the #6700 Diamond Point glimmer, the Patio Lite line, mushroom-shaped lamps introduced in 1969, and the owl. The catalog copy called the glimmer line "the most successful idea in candlelight, ever," which is the kind of claim a company makes when it is selling a great many of them. The construction is the same as Clarke's: a footed cup for a votive candle, and a shade that rests on the cup with no fastening at all. Light the candle, set the owl down over it, and the flame comes through the molded feathers and the two enormous rings of the eyes.

The 1970s were, by some distance, the busiest decade fairy lamps ever had. The molds got heavier, the colors went earthy, amber and brown and avocado and topaz, and the aesthetic tilted toward folk and craft. The Viking owl is the most fully realized object that decade produced in the form, which is why it is the one that survived as a collectible rather than as a thrift-store fixture.

Reading the piece

Two pieces, always. The base is a footed goblet with a diamond-point band around the bowl, holding the candle. The shade is the owl, hollow, open at the bottom and at the crown, with a scalloped top edge that reads as ear tufts. The whole thing stands seven inches and measures roughly 3¾ inches across the widest part of the owl.

Detail	What to expect
Catalog number	6900
Height	7 in. assembled (some sellers measure 7½)
Width	About 3¾ in.
Parts	Owl shade plus footed candle cup, unfastened
Finish	Clear (glossy) or frosted (satin), in the same colors
Mark	None in the glass. Rectangular foil label with a Viking ship, "VIKING" and usually "HAND MADE"

Because there is nothing in the glass to read, the label is worth more than it looks. A lamp that still carries its foil sticker is a lamp that has not been through a dishwasher, and it settles the Viking-versus-someone-else question before it starts. Most do not have one. Then you are identifying by the mold, by the diamond band on the base, and by the color, which is where Viking is easiest to know.

The colors, and which ones matter

Viking's colors are the reason it is collected at all, and the owl was made in most of the ones the company was pouring in the 1970s. The table below separates what the 1970 catalog documents from what came later, because that distinction is where the money is.

Color	Status	Notes
Persimmon	Common	Viking's orange, in the palette since the early 1960s. The owl you are most likely to find.
Avocado	Common	Olive green. Documented in the 1970 catalog; made for years.
Honey	Common	Viking's amber. Documented 1970. Often listed simply as "amber."
Ruby	Common	True red, documented 1970. Ruby glass is expensive to make, and a deep, even ruby owl outperforms the other staples.
Amberina	Less common	Red shading into amber. Documented 1970. The shading varies piece to piece, which is the appeal.
Bluenique	Sought after	Viking's deep blue, documented 1970. The color that sets the top of the owl market.
Thistle	Scarce	Pale purple. Documented 1970, but rarely seen as an owl.
Crystal	Scarce	Clear, documented 1970. Undervalued because it photographs badly.
Lime	Collector-reported	A brighter, yellower green than Avocado. Not in the 1970 list; treated as a later addition. Collectors report it fluoresces under UV light, so take a blacklight.
Charcoal	Collector-reported	Smoky gray. Charcoal was a 1953 Viking color, so an owl in it is either a revival or a later run. Rare.
Brown	Collector-reported	A darker, muddier tone than Honey. Reported as a later addition and hard to find.

Where buyers lose money on owls

What they actually sell for

The owl market is honest, which is rare. Common colors in complete, undamaged condition trade steadily, and the premium colors trade at a multiple rather than a fantasy.

Bluenique sets the ceiling. A Bluenique owl described as excellent, no chips or cracks, sold on eBay in late June 2026 at $250. Homestead Auctions in Norton, Ohio, offered a 7½-inch Bluenique example in January 2024 with "rare" in the lot title, which tells you how the trade thinks of the color even in the room. The green, orange and amber owls sit well below that, and a frosted example of a common color is frequently the cheapest way into the form.

The honest comparison is with the rest of Viking's output. The company made large, gorgeous, hand-finished Epic pieces that go for less than an owl in Bluenique does, because the owl has a second audience the vases do not. Half the people bidding on it are glass collectors. The other half want an owl for the mantel and would not know an Epic swung vase if they tripped over one. When two markets want the same object, the object wins.

That crossover is why the owl outlived the company. Viking was a serious glasshouse whose serious work is under-collected. Its most enduring piece is a small, slightly ridiculous bird that glows when you put a candle in it, and it is enduring for a reason: the mold is good, the eyes are enormous, and Viking's color, seen with light coming through it rather than falling on it, has never looked better than it does through a feathered chest at seven o'clock on a winter night.