Pyrex pleasures

May 12, 2016 5:00 PM

Happy Vintage Pyrex Addiction / Rare Vintage Pyrex (Pinterest) | Vintage Pyrex Kitchenware (article, Collector's Weekly) | Pattern Reference and This Is NOT Pyrex (blog posts from Pyrex Love) | How to Tell Old Pyrex from Really Old Pyrex (blog post, Cara Corey) | 3 Reasons I Love (and Collect) Vintage Pyrex (The Kitchn) | Previously: now we're cooking with glass, American Pyrex Less Resistant to Thermal Shock
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome (35 comments total)

[Inspiration for this post: I was walking around Target and stumbled upon a retro Pyrex mixing bowls section; this one seems to harken back to the "Butterprint" vintage design ("Country "Amish" Farming scene featuring farmer and wife holding a bushel of crops. Surrounding them are crops in the field, wheat sheafs tied together, roosters and corn plants."). There were other designs as well.]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 5:03 PM on May 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

If I had a time machine I would go back to my grandparents' place during the 1980s and steal all of their now-trendy '50s and '60s-era Formica/Pyrex/glassware/furniture and sell it in the present day for a billion dollars. As it is, all I asked for when my grandmother had to be moved into a retirement home was a box of old comic books and a pair of (admittedly awesome) lamps, because it was juuuuust before all of that stuff became fashionable again.
posted by The Card Cheat at 5:04 PM on May 12, 2016 [4 favorites]

I decided long ago that if space and money weren't an issue, I'd collect vintage Pyrex. But alas, they are.
posted by skycrashesdown at 5:10 PM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

My sister and I both used to collect it, but you'd basically have to have Martha Stewart's kitchen to have a place for all of it. Also, with eBay, it's not selling for quite as much as it did in the late 90s.
posted by Sophie1 at 5:11 PM on May 12, 2016

Isn't borosilicate glass poisonous? Like malachite?
posted by infinitewindow at 5:12 PM on May 12, 2016 [6 favorites]

I still have a couple of my favorite pieces from my childhood. Especially those divided ones. Carrots and peas! Next to each other!
posted by Sophie1 at 5:13 PM on May 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

My ex and I inherited my grandmother's Pyrex mixing bowl set, and one day I was washing the big yellow bowl and it slipped out of my hands into the sink... and everyone knows that panic you feel when you've dropped something and it's going to shatter into 1000 shards of glass. That thing took a large chip out of the enamel in the sink, not a mark on the bowl, no joke. The ex got it, which is fine, part of our deal, but I miss it sometimes.
posted by Huck500 at 5:14 PM on May 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

Oh my! Must tell mum not to give away the bowls I rejected for being too old fashioned!
posted by infini at 5:23 PM on May 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

I went off pyrex after I had my big 9x13 baking dish (absconded with from my mother) explode while quietly drying on the rack. It wasn't even thermal shock because it had been hand washed and had been at room temperature for a day or so. And it didn't just crack, it came apart violently with a huge smashing sound and pieces everywhere.

I still use pyrex measuring cups and some little pyrex flan cups, but the image of a pan coming apart while transporting something full of bubbling pasta and cheese or other hot food... yeah, stuck to metal pans after that.
posted by tavella at 5:38 PM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

We've got a few of the newer pyrex storage containers. They're terrific! Except the lids go missing sometimes and the pyrex folks do not seem interested in producing replacements. You have to Google em up second hand.

Hang on to your lids, people.
posted by notyou at 5:39 PM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

This reminded me of something I haven't seen since college whose disposition I can't recall: My Pyrex mac-and-cheese bowl. Or at least that's what I used it for. Maybe I'll find it when we move! Also, apropos of the Corningware recommendation in the previous linked thread, I'm proud to say I just picked up a small blue cornflower Corningware casserole dish at the thrift store last weekend. That's the pattern it seems like all my friends' households (and my house) growing up had.
posted by limeonaire at 5:55 PM on May 12, 2016

I was looking for something in Mom's attic last year, and I found a Pyrex box, and inside was an UNOPENED, NEVER USED GOOSEBERRY PINK CINDERELLA BOWL SET. I asked her if I could take them home, and she said, "Yeah, I never liked the idea of pink dishes."

I mean, COME ON. That's like finding an original copy of the Declaration of Independence behind a picture in a frame.
posted by xingcat at 6:07 PM on May 12, 2016 [18 favorites]

Ugh, why did my mom hoard all the wrong things?
posted by gatorae at 6:09 PM on May 12, 2016 [5 favorites]

I learned the hard way that modern Pyrex was not terribly resistant to thermal shock. I was very lucky I wear glasses and the kid was in the other room...

I like the old Pyrex but I love the old Fire-King stuff more (also made of borosilicate), particularly the old Jade-ite. We don't have much of it but we have some mugs and saucers and eggs cups (man I love those egg cups).
posted by Ashwagandha at 6:11 PM on May 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

Isn't borosilicate glass poisonous? Like malachite?

No. Malachite is somewhat poisonous because it's copper carbonate. In presence of any acid, the carbonate turns to carbon dioxide and the copper goes into solution (unless it precipitates, but in that case it still goes into the food).

Borosilicate isn't susceptible to acids like that.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 6:16 PM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

Ugh, why did my mom hoard all the wrong things?

My mother hoards copper (cookware, basins, anything) and my grandmother hoards cookbooks. Tick tock, tick tock.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 6:26 PM on May 12, 2016 [5 favorites]

Isn't borosilicate glass poisonous? Like malachite?

Nope!
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:29 PM on May 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

I went off pyrex after I had my big 9x13 baking dish (absconded with from my mother) explode while quietly drying on the rack. It wasn't even thermal shock…

Not a problem with vintage Pyrex! Your modern Pyrex is just tempered glass, which means it's under all kinds of internal stress in order to counteract thermal expansion, and if you scratch or nick it all that stress concentrates around the scratch and then BOOM! It shatters into a million tiny pieces without warning.

Vintage Pyrex is borosilicate glass, which is not tempered and hence doesn't have all those internal stresses. It just has a lower coefficient of expansion to begin with, compared to regular soda-lime glass. It's also more expensive, which is why Pyrex stopped using it a while back.

Modern Pyrex is nothing special. Old Pyrex is good stuff. They literally don't make them like they used to anymore.

Note that Pyrex still does a line of laboratory glassware that is made from proper borosilicate glass rather than tempered soda-lime glass, but that's not very useful in the kitchen.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:36 PM on May 12, 2016 [18 favorites]

Williams Sonoma or Sur la Table should bring back real-deal borosilicate cookware.
posted by rustcrumb at 6:50 PM on May 12, 2016 [4 favorites]

If you are in the Twin Cities, go to Ax Man Surplus on University Ave. where you can get borosilicate lab bowls and dishes. Those things come in sizes just right for the kitchen.
posted by jadepearl at 7:27 PM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

You can buy new borosilicate kitchenware made by Arcuisine on Amazon.
posted by ShooBoo at 7:50 PM on May 12, 2016 [8 favorites]

Not a problem with vintage Pyrex!

I would have said it was vintage; it was borrowed from my mother some years before they changed over. On the other hand, in between that and the breakage incident, there was a period of moving 10 times in 10 years, so it's possible at some point it was accidentally swapped with a roommate's lesser version.
posted by tavella at 7:52 PM on May 12, 2016

Ahab's comment in the previous thread about this was illuminating. Much of the "old Pyrex" most of us have here in the U.S. is apparently soda-lime glass as well. But also, chips and bangs over the years increase the odds of even old borosilicate glass meeting its end.
posted by limeonaire at 8:13 PM on May 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

You can buy new borosilicate kitchenware made by Arcuisine on Amazon.

Not to mention the scientific glassware still using borosilicate glass. I just mixed an old fashioned in a 600 mL beaker. It appeals to the chemgeek I was a lifetime or two ago.
posted by sapere aude at 9:05 PM on May 12, 2016 [5 favorites]

Isn't borosilicate glass poisonous? Like malachite?

No, but don't fuck the Pyrex either.
posted by maryr at 9:45 PM on May 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

Isn't borosilicate glass poisonous? Like malachite?

[NSFW!] http://www.theglassdildoshop.com/glass-dildo-faqs/#Q6

Looks like we're in the clear!
posted by WaylandSmith at 10:07 PM on May 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

And vice-versa!
posted by sebastienbailard at 11:11 PM on May 12, 2016 [5 favorites]

Old school Pyrex was so resistant to shattering that it was used to make the "windows" on Gemini and Apollo spacecraft. (And the stuff on the nosecones of the space shuttles? Basically Corningware.)
posted by xyzzy at 1:31 AM on May 13, 2016 [3 favorites]

I just realized that my family's cereal bowls when I was a kid were Pyrex.
posted by pxe2000 at 5:00 AM on May 13, 2016

The rest of the world can be as fancy and elegant as it likes, but I'll be cooking in my ancient Pyrex, sipping out of my Fire King mugs, and eating off my tacky-ass terrible pattern (Country Kitchen) Corelle until they pack up my estate and dump it at a thrift store, where another generation can give it another lifetime.
posted by sonascope at 5:52 AM on May 13, 2016 [3 favorites]

*Serves sonascope on vintage Corelle platters discovered in rural PA fleamarket for $4 for a box full of 12 person dinner set more or less, yes!*
posted by infini at 6:06 AM on May 13, 2016 [3 favorites]

I love Corelle too—I found most of my Snowflake Blue set for free out by a dumpster in an alley one day while walking to work about 10 years ago. I've also got a few Morning Blue Corelle dishes, green-rimmed Glendora Corelle saucers, and Spring Blossom Pyrex mugs from thrift stores.
posted by limeonaire at 3:37 PM on May 13, 2016

We need to compare our snowflake blue sets to see if we can cobble two full ones out of our pieces.
posted by infini at 6:50 AM on May 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

Now I know that the popcorn bowl I grew up with—I remember the Pyrex getting greasy—was actually an Old Orchard–pattern mixing bowl. I still hate the '70s brown color, but aw, Pyrex. All our dishes when I was growing up were basically Pyrex, Corelle, or Corningware.

Re: our Snowflake Blue sets, I have a good stack of the Corelle stuff: full-size plates, salad/dessert plates, and bowls. I think I have four teacups. I don't have any Snowflake Blue Pyrex, though.
posted by limeonaire at 8:55 AM on May 14, 2016

I mourn the snowflake blue rice plate (oval outsize platter) that had been in that fleamarket box along with dinner plates, salad plate, and a few saucer size plates) Also a large bowl. It seems these two items, teh rice plate and the bowl broke in transit in the last transcontinental move but I don't know as I just got a box from UPS with my stuff dumped into peanuts.
posted by infini at 9:04 AM on May 14, 2016