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National Museum of Cambridge Glass Opens for a New Season

The National Museum of Cambridge Glass opened on April 1, 2009 featuring over 10,000 pieces of beautiful handmade glassware and many new exhibits and interactive displays. This season marks the 24th year that the National Cambridge Collectors, Inc. has operated a museum in Cambridge, Ohio.

Museum visitors can "Step Back in Time to 1939" in a new exhibit featuring more than 200 different pieces of the Cambridge Rose Point pattern. Rose Point was very popular with brides many years ago as they assembled sets of this beautiful pattern to entertain family and friends. As museum visitors enter the replica department store showroom with their order form and 1939 price list in Museum opening 2009 hand, they will be able to create a dream list of pieces of glassware to use on their dining table. Visitors will be able to see how many pieces they could have purchased in 1939 with the gift money they received at their wedding.

New this year in the museum Edna McManus Shepard Education Center are original Cambridge Glass Company patents displayed with the piece of glassware for which they were written. Also in this area, visitors can touch and feel glassware as well as the moulds used to produce such pieces as the swan punch bowl. Original payroll records are available for guests to search for a family member that worked at the factory.

Visitors will have the opportunity to do a rubbing from an original Cambridge Glass Company etching plate to take with them as a souvenir. In addition, some members of both adult tour groups and students on field trips will be asked to dress as glassworkers as they learn what their job would have been like in the glass factory. They will hold the original tools once used to manufacture the glassware that was known worldwide for its quality and fine craftsmanship. Each student in a school group will receive a copy of the "ABC's of Glassmaking" activity booklet developed by museum volunteers.

The museum is located at 136 South Ninth Street in downtown Cambridge and is open April through October; Wednesday - Saturday from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm; Sunday from noon to 4:00 pm. and special hours by appointment. The gift shop has Cambridge glass available for purchase, as well as books about Cambridge Glass and other novelty items. For more information, call 740-432-4245.