Pretty Pyrex had a similar experience after starting her account in 2019. “I honestly didn’t expect anybody to follow it besides my mom,” she admits. “It was about a year later, in 2020, that I experienced significant growth in followers.” Viewers liked the nostalgia of Jamie’s videos and would comment that they took them back to spending time in their grandma’s kitchen. “Pyrex reminds me of a simpler time when families would all gather together for dinner and share the events of their day,” she adds.
The colorful cookware lining the women’s kitchen shelves certainly harkens back to another era. The glass that would become Pyrex was first made in 1908, whenCorning Glass Works created a borosilicate glass capable of surviving extreme temperatures. Termed Nonex and used in railroad lanterns, the material’s strength meant the glass would rarely need replacing, so the company looked to other uses for the glass.
As the story goes, the year was 1913 when a woman named Bessie Littleton, accidentally broke a baking dish and asked her husband, a Corning scientist, if she could experiment with a Nonex glass. She baked a sponge cake in the Nonex glass, and it turned out so well the company started fashioning the glass into cookware. By 1915, the company had its first Pyrex line, which included several pie plates, leading to the name Pyrex, a blending of pie and Nonex.
Jamie Hardisty, a.k.a. Pyrex Girl, displays her collection with nutcrackers painted in the bright colors mimicking her colorful Pyrex.
Today, new Pyrex can be made from either tempered soda lime glass or the original borosilicate glass. The brand switched its formula in the 1950s to the soda lime glass, but recently started reintroducing borosilicate glass. Although both glasses are heat-resistant, borosilicate glass does better with extreme temperatures, making the vintage Pyrex pieces highly coveted by collectors. “I started collecting before it was cool,” Jamie says. “A pink Daisy 043 would maybe be $12, and nowadays it would be at least $75 in good condition.” A few years ago, Corning released a collection of clear glass bowls for its 100th-year anniversary that are modern but with vintage Pyrex designs on them. “I still think there’s nothing better than vintage though,” Pretty Pyrex adds.
