Yo, Hedgie!
I'm a little curious --- how did we get from repairing the Fostoria piece to the stemware dilemma to reference books???
:-)
Regarding the reference books, my gripe is that you have to already KNOW something in order to find what you seek! Plus, as you said, sometimes only one piece of a particular pattern is pictured, and it's not the one YOU have!
It would be so cool to have little flow charts that could narrow the possibilities down to a manageable number, esp. for those such as moi who don't even know where to begin half the time. Paging through books over and over and over takes a bit of time, y'know?
For instance, GPS's stems. You go to this imaginary reference and look under stemware. Under stemware, you have some basic stem descriptions to choose from, and under those some more specific descriptions, until Voila!
I do have one of the books that has an index of makers, and two with patterns in alphabetical order, but, again, if you haven't a CLUE to start with, it's hard to make any progress.
SO, Hedgie, you get cracking on that book, make a million (or two), and give me a cut (say 10%) for the idea! Just think, you could go to a big glass show and go "nyah, nyah, nyah" to those creeps who sent you on a wild goose chase.
happy 4th, all!
Bev