Early American - Corning Ware, not Pyrex

Most of us that collect anything even remotely connected to Corning Glass Works are familiar with some of the Pyrex patterns.  Early American Pyrex Ware, in it's lovely shades of Brown, White and sometimes Gold was a fairly common pattern in it's day. (1962-1971).

There was, however, another Corning product by the same name, though not nearly as common nor well known.  Corning Ware also came in an Early American pattern.

Granted a much simpler pattern, featuring a lone bald eagle in black, and devoid of superfluous accoutrements like weather vanes, cats, coffee grinders, bellows, kerosene lamps and ears of corn.

Very little is known about this pattern, but thankfully some of the original boxes have shown up, so the correct name has been verified.  All the pieces seem to be unmarked, however, the saucepans have P-series handle lugs, so production was prior to 1972.  The fact that there are 2 percolators in this pattern (P-119 and P-116) suggests that date should be lowered from 1972 to 1970, because Corning discontinued the P-119 in lieu of the P-149, which made it's debut in the Renaissance Limited Edition Gift Line from 1970.  Recent developments have also revealed the existence of a P-23-EP (1st generation Electromatic Percolator)... Since these were discontinued in favor of the P-80-EP model in 1966, this firmly places this pattern to a 1962-1966 production window.

There is a variation on this pattern where the eagle has a solid black head.  (As seen on this MW-11 piece)

Whether it was a test pattern or not remains a mystery.

Where is your Corning Ware??
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More Sweet Wheat - Wheat W-23-EP Percolator

As I have mentioned before, the old story about "Wheat" being the initially intended pattern for Corning Ware, and how the pattern was not ready for production so the Cornflower was used instead, has long been shown to not hold any water.  (because there are blue wheat prototypes out there - it's possible the enamel color wasn't "ready")   The "limited number of pieces" claim has also been refuted several times.  This percolator's existence only backs up the fact that "small number of pieces" is completely false.

Though I admit, I have been searching for some trace of it's production for several years....  3 actually showed up within a 1 month span on eBay....   So it's not a "one of" scenario.   Just as the W-53 Self-Timing saucepan proved that Wheat had been in production from at least 1963 (the only year those were made); the existence for the 1st generation Electromatic Percolator W-23-EP (Along with its other 1sts gen brethren; Trefoil P-13-EP and Cornflower P-23-EP) proves that wheat could have been in production as early as the fall of 1961.

Though not as common as the latter model (P-80-EP and P-6-EP from 1966-1972) let it be known that these older percolators DO, in fact, exist.

Please note, that the cord to this percolator is not original.  Unlike the later P-80-EP, P-6-EP and E-1210 percolator models that have proprietary cords, these 1st Generation models (P-23-EP, P-13-EP & W-23-EP) used a standard appliance cord that can be purchased at just about any hardware store, even today - Part # 30123

Where is your Corning Ware??
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