The Sisterhood of The Travelling Pyrex

We recently had a family day out.  Most people go for days out at the seaside or perhaps to a theme park.  We went combined vintage Pyrex/Medieval graffiti hunting!  That may sound a little odd but I wanted to check out the antique centres in our nearest city and my sister, who is doing a Masters in Medieval History, wanted to examine the cathedral to look again at it’s fine graffiti.  Neither of us can drive, so mum came as chauffeur!  Things got off to a bad start when not too far from home but just long enough to be in the countryside, the car started making a very weird noise and bumping along as if the wheels were square.  Fortunately, there was a service station not too far away, where we limped to a halt to survey our pancake like tyre.  After much frantic searching on the internet and conferring with the petrol station owner, we found a lovely man who came out right away from the nearest market town, replaced the tyre and charged us much less than we’d expected!  It was lucky he came immediately as we were in the middle of a heatwave in the UK and if he’d delayed, we might have melted!

After that false start we were on our way again, finally arriving at our destination in the early afternoon.  I can’t help thinking my sister had the better side of the deal as I’m sure the cathedral must have been a lot cooler than wandering about the antiques centres of the city.  Two hours, two cups of tea and a strawberry ice cream later, we were on the way back to the car with a large box of bubble wrapped vintage Pyrex.  This was only possible after dragging my mother away from a lot of old Tupperware, that had it not been for my prompt and decisive action, would now have been cluttering up our kitchen.  

I rang my sister and she soon met us back at the car, suggesting we all pop back to the nearby indoor antiques market for a drink before heading home.  In retrospect, agreeing to this was a huge mistake… My sister, although not technically a Pyrex collector herself, is starting to get into it (inevitable really I suppose) and it didn’t take her long to spot a tiny white with black pattern, Snowflake dish.  As you may remember, I don’t collect vintage Pyrex tableware and I believe this is a piece of tableware.  It’s very tiny, smaller than a dessert bowl and my sister fell in love with it.  She asked me what it was and I facetiously replied that it was a special casserole dish for babies!  She immediately went “Awwwww” and went and bought it!  Naturally it didn’t have a lid (nor do I think it should have one but more on that later!).  This purchased we finally started for home, deciding to stop on the way at our local supermarket to pick up a few things.

The journey back was uneventful, as was the supermarket trip, until we were going round the roundabout outside, finally five minutes from home!  Suddenly my mum started going on about baby rabbits, came off the roundabout, drove to the next one and  went right round it until we were back at the original one again!  She then told my sister and I to keep our eyes on the roundabout and there, right at the edge by the busy main road, was a baby rabbit, nibbling away on a half cabbage which had thoughtfully been lobbed to him by some Good Samaritan!   There then arose a spirited debate about what could be done for said infant creature – mother insisting we had to do something, me saying I didn’t see what we could do and I certainly wasn’t going onto a roundabout in rush hour to run around trying to catch a baby bunny (I can hear you all thinking how mean I am but then I wouldn’t need to do it because my sister is always the first one up for such challenges!) and my sister saying she would get it BUT they carry myxomatosis, so she couldn’t possibly!  By this time we had actually arrived home but mum was so anxious about the “poor little thing” that we turned round and drove back, having decided to ring the RSPCA if it was still there.  Weirdly, when we got back, the cabbage had been abandoned and Bugs had gone. This was a bit of a relief, as I’d had visions of my sister attempting to secure the bunny wearing some sort of hazmat suit improvised from whatever we had in the car!  

Author: PyrexPartyPixie

I’m a student, swimmer and sci-fi fan by day but by night (well, more like evenings, weekends and Bank Holidays) I don my apron and become the Pyrex Party Pixie! I love all things Pyrex and have been a collector for some time now. My earliest experience of Pyrex was my mum’s clear jug and mixing bowl - both of which, had I bothered to think of them at all, I would have considered boring, and utilitarian. Then I saw some vintage Pyrex in a charity shop and I was hooked! I love cooking and I’d never seen such colourful, versatile and well-designed cookware before. Using the colourful designs from the ‘fifties, ‘sixties and ‘seventies really brightens your day, whether you’re cooking for pleasure or through necessity. As my collection grew I discovered that I genuinely enjoy looking for vintage pieces, almost as much as I enjoy displaying and using them and thus Pyrex Party Pixie came to be. Not everyone enjoys the search though, so I thought it would be good to have a one-stop vintage Pyrex shop online, especially helpful for collectors or casual admirers who don’t have access to any local sources of new pieces. This blog is based on my love of vintage Pyrex! Hope you enjoy :) View all posts by PyrexPartyPixie