Heisey Glass Museum
National Heisey Glass Museum playing cards featuring artistic glass tableware and figurines, USA, 2006.
The National Heisey Glass Museum (NHGM) was established in Veterans Park in downtown Newark, Ohio in 1972 to display and promote the study of the products of the A.H. Heisey & Company (1896-1957). The company produced high-quality, handmade glass tableware and fine and decorative glass figurines which have become highly collectible. The Museum was established and is maintained by the Heisey Collectors of America, Inc. Each of the 54 cards shows a photograph (taken by Frank Orienter) of a glass product or products, with name and Museum number. The graphic designer was Sharon Orienter. See the box►
Above: National Heisey Glass Museum playing cards, USA, 2006.
By Peter Burnett
Member since July 27, 2022
I graduated in Russian and East European Studies from Birmingham University in 1969. It was as an undergraduate in Moscow in 1968 that I stumbled upon my first 3 packs of “unusual” playing cards which fired my curiosity and thence my life-long interest. I began researching and collecting cards in the early 1970s, since when I’ve acquired over 3,330 packs of non-standard cards, mainly from North America, UK and Western Europe, and of course from Russia and the former communist countries.
Following my retirement from the Bodleian Library in Dec. 2007 I took up a new role as Head of Library Development at the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) to support library development in low-income countries. This work necessitated regular training visits to many sub-Saharan African countries and also further afield, to Vietnam, Nepal and Bangladesh – all of which provided rich opportunities to further expand my playing card collection.
Since 2019 I’ve been working part-time in the Bodleian Library where I’ve been cataloguing the bequest of the late Donald Welsh, founder of the English Playing Card Society.
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