I’d like to speak today about some of the different types of bottles and
flasks blown first in the Colonies and then in these United States
during the 17th, 18th and first quarter of the 19th centuries. It will
likely come as a surprise to many of you that initial attempts to blow
glass in the colonies began as early as 1608 in Jamestown, an ill fated
enterprise that ceased within the year. A second attempt to create a
viable Glass House Jamestown began in 1622 and ended in 1624.
There is some speculation that one or both of these glass houses
successfully produced glass beads but most current glass scholarship
indicates that neither venture was successful in the creation of glass
window panes or bottles. Other short lived and/or low production 17th
century enterprises include glass houses in Salem, Massachusetts
(beginning in 1639) and Evert Duykinck’s New Amsterdam Glass
House which operated from 1645 to 1674. Sadly, little is known of the
bottles blown at these houses but it can be assumed that the bottles
they produced were blown in the English or European tradition on a
relatively limited scale. Because of the popularity and availability of
imported glass, the bottles produced in 17th century Glass Houses
were created for limited local consumption with the colonists’ need
primarily satisfied by English and European imports.
(CHANGE SLIDE) It was not until 1739 and the creation of the
Wistarburgh Glass Works in Alloway, New Jersey that what would
eventually become the American Glass Bottle Industry first took root
and what I refer to as the “Colonial Period” of glass manufacturing had
its start. Lasting roughly until 1815, this period is characterized by
hand-crafted bottles blown in the English and Germanic tradition
utilizing raw materials from our own shores. The reliance upon
traditional Old Country forms and techniques was a natural result of
two distinctly different forces. First, the craft of glassblowing
remained an “art” that few colonial settlers fully understood.
Glassblowers were a highly protected (and valuable) commodity across
the European continent and only limited numbers of these skilled
workers migrated to the colonies in order to share and practice their
craft. As a consequence, glassblowing remained a closely guarded and
somewhat mysterious “secret” throughout much of the 18th century.
The second reason behind reliance on English and European forms is
perhaps a bit more difficult for today’s Americans to understand.
Although distaste for Mother England continued to grow throughout
the 18th century, public opinion still overwhelmingly favored English
and European arts and crafts, believing that they were “finer.” There
was little support for domestic arts and/or industry, a situation that
would not change until an independent American economy emerged in
the aftermath of the War of 1812 and the Treaty of Ghent became
effective in February of 1815.
What then, were these English and Germanic inspired objects
produced by the 18th and early 19th century Colonial Glass Houses?
Although none of the bottles produced on our shores during this period
are “marked” by their maker, excavations of the Wistarburgh Site,
Steigel’s Works in Manheim, PA and the Pitkin Glass Works in
Manchester, CT sheds a good deal of light on the production
techniques used by these factories and their resulting wares. In
addition, the pioneering works of George and Helen McKearin, Harry
Hall White and others give students of today a broad range of
knowledge from which to base their study of Colonial Period bottles.
(CHANGE SLIDE) It could easily be argued that the most aesthetically
pleasing of the colonial period bottles were the pattern molded pocket
flasks blown at Baron Von Siegel’s Manheim, PA glass works. Dating
back to the time of the Romans and revived during the Renaissance,
the pattern molding technique involves use of a one piece cone shaped
or sometimes two-piece hinged mold cut with ribs or designs. Of
Continental ancestry, the pattern molded pocket bottles produced by
Stiegel’s German glassblowers in the 5 year period from 1769 to 1774
have aroused more excitement and more confusion among collectors
than any other type of bottles or flasks. (As an aside, much of this
confusion relates to similar but thankfully distinguishable flasks blown
by Emile Larson of Vineland, NJ in the 1930s.) Blown from a high
grade of non-lead glass, Stiegel’s attractive vessels were artificially
enhanced through the addition of metal oxides in the glass batch to
produce striking shades of blues and amethysts. Created to be
indistinguishable from English and European imports (and playing to
the colonists’ notion that English and European Glass was the “best”
glass) these flasks remain a perplexing study, as there is still little
differentiation between those flasks blown at Manheim and those
blown abroad. With that said, there are four patterns; the diamond
daisy (CHANGE SLIDE), the 12 diamond(CHANGE SLIDE), the 28
honeycombs-above-flutes (CHANGE SLIDE), and the Daisy-inhexagon(CHANGE SLIDE) to which no exact English or European
counterparts have been discovered. This fact, coupled with the
discovery of numerous flasks of this type in and around Manheim
during the earliest days of bottle collecting gives flasks blown in these
molds a well accepted attribution of having been blown at Stiegel’s
Works. And, although not ALL bottles blown in similar forms using 18
and 20 rib molds (CHANGE SLIDE) as well as a mold known as “small
diamonds over flutes” were blown at Manheim, it is probable that
SOME were.
(CHANGE SLIDE) Also blown in this period were flasks made in the
“German half-post” method which are colloquially referred to as Pitkintype (based upon notions of early collectors that they were peculiar to
the Pitkin Glass Works of Manchester, CT), though today we
understand that flasks of this type were a regular product of numerous
glass houses. These German half-post flasks were created by first
slightly inflating the gather of metal (a glassblowers term for the glass
in the melting pot) on the end of the blowpipe, then reinserting the
gather into the batch of molten glass for a “half-post” (double-dipped,
so to speak) before expanding the gather within a ribbed mold,
removing the gather and finally expanding the flask to its final size and
shape. If the flask were to be “double patterned” (i.e. both vertical
and spiral ribbing) there would be a second insertion into the mold
before finalizing the form. (CHANGE SLIDE) Popular in Germany and
Eastern Europe throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, this technique
would certainly have been practiced by the six German blowers who
came to Wistarburgh in 1739 and it is quite probable that German
half-post flasks were among the vessels produced there.
It would
follow then, that the Germans who first manned Stiegel’s furnaces
would also have carried the technique with them and produced flasks
of this type prior to 1774 and concurrent with the aforementioned
Diamond Daisy.
(CHANGE SLIDE) It is with the birth of glassblowing in New England
and the Midwest however, that the production of German half-post
bottles and flasks reached their zenith. Blown in great numbers in
Connecticut at the Pitkin Glass Works (beginning in 1791), the
Glastenbury Glass Works, Mather’s Glass Works in East Hartford, the
Coventry Glass Works, and also at the Keene Glass Works in Keene,
NH, German half-post bottles were THE most common pocket bottles
produced in the original colonies until the emergence of the figured
flask in or around 1815. (CHANGE SLIDE) The German half-post
design appealed to Glassblowers and commoners alike in that they
were lightweight but sturdy (strengthened by the second gather of
metal) and presumably easy to grasp. That they are also aesthetically
pleasing is to my mind no unintended result, as the glassblowers of
this period still perceived themselves as craftsmen and not cogs in an
industrial machine. Flasks of this type were blown in (roughly) halfpint and full pint sizes and they appear primarily in naturally occurring
earthy tones without artificial enhancement.
(CHANGE SLIDE) The German half-post technique was also practiced
across the Midwest in Pittsburgh and Ohio, first appearing sometime
around the turn of the 19th century. (CHANGE SLIDE) More varied in
both colors and rib counts than their New England counterparts,
Midwestern German half-post bottles have a distinctly 18th century
“feel,” although few are that early and some were actually blown into
the 1820s and perhaps even the 1830s. (CHANGE SLIDE) In addition
to producing flasks in the half-post method, many of the Midwestern
Glass Houses also produced “single dipped” pattern molded flasks that
were not reinserted into the metal and thus did not exhibit the “halfpost.” Flasks of this type are thus not “Pitkin-type” but rather simply
“pattern molded.” With their antecedents in the Diamond Daisy and
other flasks blown in Manheim, PA, pattern molded flasks were made
in substantial numbers at the Pittsburgh District Glass Houses of the
early 19th century and in greater numbers yet at the Ohio Glass
Houses throughout the first quarter of the nineteenth century. These
flasks were blown in a variety of shapes and colors utilizing differently
numbered “ribbed” and variously patterned “diamond” molds as a
means of decoration. As a general rule these vessels are rounder than
their New England counterparts (which tend towards the elliptical) and
blown from a brilliant higher quality metal. It has been argued that
the quality of glass from the region is a result of either (or both)
access to coal and/or higher quality raw materials such as sand.
(CHANGE SLIDE) Similar techniques were utilized in the manufacture
of pattern molded bottles within the area. Produced in numerous
forms, it is the globular and club shaped bottles that are most notable.
As with the pattern molded flasks of the region, these bottles are
blown from brilliant metal and they are as a rule startlingly well-made
and symmetrical, though still, obviously individually crafted. The
popularity of these Midwestern bottles and flasks among local
populations was such that production of them lingered well into the
1820s and perhaps into the 1830s, a decade or more after pattern
molded bottles had lost favor in the coastal cities. Still, bottles and
flasks of this type fit comfortably with the “colonial period” as they are
decidedly influenced by 18th century Continental design.
(CHANGE SLIDE) Other vessels produced at 18th century Glass Houses
include a wide variety of coarsely made black glass “junk bottles” that
as with the pattern molded flasks were blown in the English or
European tradition. Blown to hold ale, beer, porter and cider (all of
which were consumed in great quantities by the colonists), these
bottles were relatively thick walled (out of necessity) and generally
blown of dark “black” glass.
And, although it is true that many of the
ale and cider bottles used by colonists during this period were
imported from England, there is ample evidence showing that bottles
of this type were blown at Germantown, in Manheim and at the South
Boston Works prior to 1815. In addition, recent findings show that
“junk” bottles were almost certainly a regular product of the New
Geneva Glass Works, blown in great enough quantities that in April of
1800, Albert Gallatin reported that he would have “some thousands of
black bottles blown for the French market” ready by month’s end. That
such bottles were also blown at Wistarburgh, the Pitkin Glass Works
and other Glass Houses of the period is a probability, even though it is
today nearly impossible to distinguish them from English and
Continental imports.
Like the English made bottles that they emulated, these bottles were
typically roughly one pint in size and blown with the aid of a shallow
dip-mold to give the bottles a generally cylindrical form. As a result,
the junk bottles of the 18th century show some symmetry but they are
decidedly non-uniform in both size and capacity, reflecting the
personality of the blower.
This same manufacturing technique was utilized in the production of
larger wine and spirits bottles, which like the pint-sized porters and
ales were blown to emulate the familiar products of English Glass
Works. (CHANGE SLIDE) The earliest of the black glass English spirits
bottles were blown with a squat, low slung body and extended neck,
gradually becoming taller and more slender through the Revolution
and up to the creation of the three-piece mold in or around 1815.
Though Helen McKearin proposes that some of the earliest English type
bottles (the shaft and globe) MAY have been produced at the Salem
Glass Works in the 1650s, it is not until the mid 18th century that we
can find solid evidence of black glass wine and spirits bottles blown on
American soil. (CHANGE SLIDE) In his extensive archeological
research at the site of the Germantown Glass Works, Richmond “Boo”
Morcom (a NH legend, by the way) found black glass seals and
remnants of black glass spirits bottles in great enough quantities to
indicate that they were a product of that Glass Works and not simply
remains of cullet. Among the seals is an extraordinary piece dated
1755 with the name of “Thomas Hutchinson.” At the time a young
Boston lawyer, Hutchinson would eventually become Governor of the
Commonwealth. Also found by Morcom at Germantown was a seal
impressed “J. Mascarene” and dated 1748.
This seal has caused
some controversy over the years (in that the Germantown Works were
purportedly not in existence until 1750) but Morcom makes a strong
argument in favor of Germantown production by noting that the dates
impressed on a seal typically referred to the year in which the contents
were distilled and NOT the year in which the bottle was blown. If that
is the case, the “J. Mascarene 1748” seal would be the earliest piece of
dated glass known to have been blown in the colonies.
(CHANGE SLIDE) Wine and spirits bottles were also blown at
Wistarburgh and the Corning Museum Collection includes a bottle from
the 1760s with an impressed seal of “RW,” probably made for the son
of the Glass Houses’ founder, Richard Wistar. Blown from a light
green glass typical of Wistarburgh products, the bottle is decidedly
English/Continental in form but is lighter in color (typical of the Jersey
sand) and appears lighter in weight than the coal fired English glass of
the period. Further evidence of Wistarburgh spirits bottles was found
by Morcom during construction of I95 in downtown Philadelphia.
Among his findings were numerous black glass bottles, shards and two
seals, each impressed “S. Lewis / Haverford / Pennsylvania.” Located
just 35 miles Northwest of Alloway (and the site of Wistarburgh) it is
far from a stretch to believe that these bottles and seals were blown at
Wistarburgh for local consumption.
(CHANGE SLIDE) In addition to dip molded spirits bottles our 18th and
early 19th century glass houses also produced many thousands of the
ubiquitous chestnut and globular bottles with which many of you are
familiar, in great enough numbers in fact, that these bottles remain
relatively common today. The earliest of these bottles were blown at
Wistarburgh and they are typically rather large (8”) with elongated,
somewhat pear shaped bodies and heavily applied collared mouths.
Found in shades of both natural bottle glass greens and ambers, it
would appear that these bottles were a mainstay of Wistarburgh’s
production. (CHANGE SLIDE) Blown first in New England at Pitkin in
or around 1791, and later at all of the New England Glass Houses of
the period, these simple, freeblown and/or dip-molded bottles were
produced en masse to meet both commercial and domestic demands.
Suitable for a wide range of uses, the often asymmetrical chestnuts
and globs were typically rendered from a coarse grade of wood fired
bottle glass. Generally light in weight and pale in color, these
relatively simple vessels were the most popular of the all-purpose
domestically manufactured bottles of the Colonial Period. (CHANGE
SLIDE) Evidence of the wide range of storage needs for which they
were used is shown in the variety of sizes in which they were blown –
examples can be found today ranging from 2” all the way to 16” with
all sizes in between covered. It is likely that the smallest of these
bottles (both globular and chestnut shaped) were used by doctors and
druggists and perhaps by household bottlers and merchants as well for
the storage of essences and/or medicinals. The larger bottles (more
typically globular but sometimes chestnut-shaped) were presumably
blown for bulk storage of wines, liquors and perhaps medicines.
(CHANGE SLIDE) Not surprisingly, chestnut and globular bottles were
also produced at the Midwestern Glass Houses and like the pocket
bottles of the era, their usage lingered beyond that of the Eastern
output. Heavier and blown from a more refined metal than similar
objects blown in New England, these chestnut and globular bottles
attained some favor among local consumers, though their relative
scarcity today indicates a preference amongst Midwesterners for the
pattern molded wares I discussed earlier.
(CHANGE SLIDE) Also blown during this period were freeblown and
dip molded jars that were designed for a multitude of uses. Created
from both window and bottle glass, jars of this period were used by
Doctors and Druggists for powdered ingredients, in the home for
storage and food preservation and commercially for the packaging of
pickles, sweets and other preserves. (CHANGE SLIDE) In its design,
the jar’s heavily contracted shoulder and wide, flanged mouth served
as the perfect anchor for securing cork, bladder or cloth as would have
been used in the preservation of perishables. Although blown in sizes
ranging from a few inches to vessels holding several gallons, it would
appear that most jars of the period were of substantial size, meant to
hold products in bulk.
(CHANGE SLIDE) Other bottles of the Colonial Period include medicine
vials as first advertised by Stiegel in 1772. Typically quite narrow with
short necks and delicately flared lips, the capacity of these vials
generally ranged from one half ounce to eight ounces. It appears from
advertisements of the period that freeblown and dip molded medicine
vials were a regular production item for bottle glass houses, window
glass houses and flint glass houses into the 1820s.
(CHANGE SLIDE) Typically blown using coarse, olive amber metal and
formed with the aid of a dip mold, snuff and blacking bottles of the
Colonial period were produced in a plethora of shapes and sizes. A
regular production item in every Glass House of the period, snuffs and
blackings were sometimes round, more often square or rectangular
and rarely, polygonal. During his excavations at the site of the
Germantown Glass Glassworks, Richmond Morcom found shards of
heavily collared rectangular snuff bottles in great enough quantities to
show that they were blown there, although it can be presumed that
bottles of this type were also imported from England. Snuff bottles are
also known to have been blown at Wistarburgh and at Stiegel’s Works
in Manheim, where account books show that 1,084 snuff bottles were
blown in February of 1767 alone.
(CHANGE SLIDE) Production of snuff bottles (in response to increasing
consumer demand) continued throughout the colonial period, with
examples of particular aesthetic appeal blown in East Hartford and
other early Connecticut Glass Houses. (CHANGE SLIDE) There is sound
documentation of snuff bottle production in the Midwest as well,
though at this point it appears the form and design of these bottles
does not distinguish them from the output of the New England Houses.
(CHANGE SLIDE) As with the flasks of the colonial period, inkwells
were both freeblown and pattern molded in Glass Houses of both the
East and the West. Most notable among the Eastern ink bottles are
the pattern-molded Pitkin-types, which like the flasks, were
constructed in the German half-post method. Blown in both square
and generally conical forms, Pitkin-type inkwells are by their nature
asymmetrical and varied in their sizes and capacities. Other New
England inks were pattern molded, though not using the half-post, as
is the case with the so-called pattern molded “melon” inks. Inks of
this type were also blown without use of a pattern mold and in a
variety of sizes. Though typically attributed to the early Connecticut
Glass Houses, freeblown and pattern molded inks were also almost
assuredly blown in Keene and at Mount Vernon, NY.
(CHANGE SLIDE) As I suggested at the beginning of the talk, the
Colonial period of glassmaking comes to end in or around 1815 with
the creation of the two-piece mold figured flask and the invention of
blown three mold glass. Distinctively American in form, design,
execution and imagery, it is with these types of bottles that American
Glass Houses began to shrug off the bonds of English and European
tradition and create objects that were distinctly our own. (This is the
point where we MAY show additional slides)
I’d love to open up the floor for questions but before doing so I’ll also
let you know that we have brought some material from our inventory
that folks are welcome to handle before they leave. As we are all
dealers I’ve left our price tags on not to impress anyone but rather to
convey the general value of some of these bottles in the current
marketplace. Thank you.