Early American molded glass

Last updated

Early American molded glass refers to glass functional and decorative objects, such as bottles and dishware, that were manufactured in the United States in the 19th century. The objects were produced by blowing molten glass into a mold, thereby causing the glass to assume the shape and pattern design of the mold. When a plunger rather than blowing is used, as became usual later, the glass is technically called pressed glass. Common blown molded tableware items bearing designs include salt dishes, sugar bowls, creamers, celery stands, decanters, and drinking glasses. [1]

Contents

Household items, other than dishware, made using the three-mold method include inkwells, oil lamps, birdcage fountains, hats, medicine and perfume bottles, and witch balls. [2] Whiskey flasks bearing unique designs were made in two part molds. Undecorated bottles used as containers for a variety of liquids were blown into square molds to give them corners so they could be packed into compartments of wooden cases. [3]

History

After the War of 1812, American glass manufacturers began using molds as an inexpensive way to produce glassware similar in appearance to the much more expensive cut glass that was imported from Britain and Ireland. [4] A dearth of skilled glassblowers may have also led to the increased use of molds. [5] Blown molded glass was popular for about twenty years before it was superseded by pressed glass. [4]

Production

The process of blowing molten glass into a mold made of clay is known to have been employed in Syrian workshops as early as the 4th century BCE. [6] Romans adopted the technique in the 1st century CE. [7] Molds used in 19th-century European and American glass factories were cast in iron or bronze. [8] They were made by professional mold manufacturers in many large United States cities and were universally available. Although no intact molds have been found, fragments of molds have been excavated at glass manufacturing sites in Sandwich, Massachusetts and Kent and Mantua, Ohio. [9]

The mold, which was placed on the floor or below floor level, [10] was not three molds, but one mold in three parts. It was made of hinged sections that could be opened and closed by means of a foot- or hand-operated treadle. One of the vertical walls of the mold was permanently fastened to the base, and the other walls were attached to it by removable pins. Designs were cut into the inside walls of all mold parts. Some molds impressed a pattern on the object and base, while others omitted the base. Most molds were in three parts, but could also be constructed of two or four parts. Regardless of the number of parts of a mold, all objects produced in a mold are called three-mold glass. [11]

The process of molding was just the initial step in the manufacture of three-mold glass. After removal from the mold, the glass was expanded by means of additional blowing. [12] The object was then cracked off at the rim and hand finished by grinding and polishing. [13] Pitcher rims, decanter necks and bases all required hand work. In New England, pieces were often finished with threaded lips. Handles were also added after removal from the mold. [12] Lamps, candlesticks and vases were pressed in separate parts and fused together while still hot. [14] Finished pieces were fire polished by reheating in the furnace, which softened the pattern and gave the piece a diffuse brilliance. [15]

Between 1820 and 1840, one hundred glass factories are known to have been in operation in the U.S. [16] It is known from descriptions in advertisements and invoices that the Boston and Sandwich Glass Company and the New England Glass Company were major producers of blown three-mold glass. [13] Most colorless glass was made by the New England Glass Company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. [17] Also producing three-mold glass in New England was the Boston Crown Glass Manufactory, [18] as well as the Quincy Glass Works in Massachusetts, which made snuff bottles molded to a square form. [19] Three-piece molds were used from 1815 to 1835 in midwestern houses, most notably in Ohio. Marlboro Street Factory in Keene, NH manufactured dark green and amber bottle glass and was known for the manufacture of inkwells. In New York and New Jersey, famous glass manufacturers of blown three-mold glass include the Mount Vernon Glass Company, Brooklyn Flint Glass Works, and Jersey City Glassworks. The Coventry, CT Glass Company was also a manufacturer of three-mold items. It is believed that glass factories in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Baltimore also produced three-mold glassware, but since excavation is not possible, no proof exists. Some foreign molded three-part glass manufactured in England, Ireland (two part molds) and France (three part molds) in the early 19th century, is sometimes mistaken for American glass. [17]

Colors and patterns

Colors of blown three-mold glass are relatively rare, [20] however, some objects in deep gray-blue, sapphire blue, olive green, yellow-green, citron, aquamarine and amethyst-purple have survived. [15] Items made of colorless glass and green bottle glass are most commonly seen.

The three main categories of three-mold glass patterns are Geometric, Arch and Baroque. Diamond patterning, also known as diamond diapering or diamond quilting, [21] is the most common Geometric design found on molded glass. [13] Other common designs include ribbed and popcorn. [22] Items bearing Geometric designs are the most numerous and include tableware, such as decanters, stoppers, cruets, casters, condiment sets, pitchers, punch bowls, pans, dishes, preserve dishes, mugs, tumblers, wine glasses, celery glasses and salts, and doll dishes. Also in the Geometric category is ribbing, which could be imprinted on the object vertically, horizontally, diagonally or in a swirled pattern. Ribs can be narrow or wide, differently spaced, rounded, flat or inverted. [15] Arch, the most rare of the three designs, uses a series of Gothic (pointed) or Roman (rounded) arches. Sometimes both types of arches appear. [23] Baroque patterning includes Shell (rocaille) ornaments with broad, rounded, vertical ribbing and often combined with design of a band of palmettes or trefoils. Other Baroque designs include stars in circles, rosettes, thick chains (guilloches), hearts, a horn of plenty, pinwheels, and fluid drapery. [24]

Designs imprinted on whiskey bottles include political events, celebrities, the American eagle, horn of plenty, head of Lady Liberty, agricultural symbols and Masonic emblems. A favorite whiskey bottle illustration was the head of George Washington under which was inscribed a text. Two texts found on bottles with the Washington design are “The Father of His Country,” and “I Have Endeavor’d to do my Duty.” Lafayette with DeWitt Clinton were popular whiskey bottle designs at the time of the opening of the Erie Canal. Other political figures include General Jackson and Zachary Taylor. Taylor flasks have been discovered with the captions, “Corn for the world,” and “Gen’l Taylor Never Surrenders.” Images of John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay and William Henry Harrison also appear on flasks. [25]

Distinguishing characteristics

The main characteristic that sets apart three-mold ware from pressed glass is that the inverse of the pattern of three-mold glass can be felt on the inside of the object. Pressed glass is patterned only on the exterior and smooth inside. [26] Pressed glass, termed “mold-pressed,” has an interior form independent of the exterior, in contrast to mold-blown glass, whose interior corresponds to the outer form. [27] Plates, lamp bases and door knobs were usually made of pressed glass. [28]

Molded glass can be easily distinguished from cut glass, since cut glass sparkles with prismatic brilliance as the sharp angles of the cuts in the glass break up light into all colors of the spectrum, and molded glass has a softer, more rounded surface which transmits a silvery, more luminous gleam. Tiny raised hairline seams where the mold sections were joined and a slight displacement in parts of the pattern are often seen on molded glass. [15]

Nomenclature

Although Early American glassware advertisements are often found using the terms “moulded” and “prest” interchangeably, pattern-molded (pressed) and blown three-mold glass were manufactured by means of two distinct processes. Blown three-mold glass was sometimes called “prest” (pressed) because the glass was blown into a mold and “impressed” with a design. [29] Various names for blown three mold glass have been used by collectors since its rediscovery in the early 20th century. It was first called “Stiegel glass” by collector Frederick W. Hunter because a few pieces of three-mold glass were included in his Stiegel collection. Later, it was called Stoddard glass, after the name of a factory that, in fact, never made three-mold glass. In the 1920s, American glass writer Rhea Mansfield Knittle unsuccessfully tried to introduce the term “insufflated.” [30] Blown-three-mold pieces might also be called “blown molded” [31] as well as “pre-blown-three-mold” because molten glass was partially inflated before it was inserted into the mold. [29] The names currently used by collectors are three-mold or blown three-mold.

Related Research Articles

Glassblowing Technique for forming glass

Glassblowing is a glassforming technique that involves inflating molten glass into a bubble with the aid of a blowpipe. A person who blows glass is called a glassblower, glassmith, or gaffer. A lampworker manipulates glass with the use of a torch on a smaller scale, such as in producing precision laboratory glassware out of borosilicate glass.

Studio glass Modern use of glass as an artistic medium

Studio glass is the modern use of glass as an artistic medium to produce sculptures or three-dimensional artworks. The glass objects created are intended to make a sculptural or decorative statement. Though usage varies, the term is properly restricted to glass made as art in small workshops, typically with the personal involvement of the artist who designed the piece. This is in contrast to art glass, made by craftsmen in factories, and glass art, covering the whole range of glass with artistic interest made throughout history. Both art glass and studio glass originate in the 19th century, and the terms compare with studio pottery and art pottery, but in glass the term "studio glass" is mostly used for work made in the period beginning in the 1960s with a major revival in interest in artistic glassmaking.

Wheaton Industries

Wheaton Industries was a long-standing famous manufacturer of glassware and ceramics products in Millville, New Jersey, USA. A spin-off of the original firm adopted the name in 2006.

Blow molding manufacturing process for forming and joining together hollow plastic parts

Blow molding is a manufacturing process for forming and joining together hollow plastic parts. It is also used for forming glass bottles or other hollow shapes.

Glass bottle

A glass bottle is a bottle made from glass. Glass bottles can vary in size considerably, but are most commonly found in sizes ranging between about 200 millilitres and 1.5 litres. Common uses for glass bottles include food condiments, soda, liquor, cosmetics, pickling and preservatives. These types of bottles are utilitarian and serve a purpose in commercial industries.

Caneworking Glassblowing technique

In glassblowing, cane refers to rods of glass with color; these rods can be simple, containing a single color, or they can be complex and contain strands of one or several colors in pattern. Caneworking refers to the process of making cane, and also to the use of pieces of cane, lengthwise, in the blowing process to add intricate, often spiral, patterns and stripes to vessels or other blown glass objects. Cane is also used to make murrine, thin discs cut from the cane in cross-section that are also added to blown or hot-worked objects. A particular form of murrine glasswork is millefiori, in which many murrine with a flower-like or star-shaped cross-section are included in a blown glass piece.

Glass etching Decorating glass by etching

Glass etching, or "French embossing," is a popular technique developed during the mid-1800s that is still widely used in both residential and commercial spaces today. Glass etching comprises the techniques of creating art on the surface of glass by applying acidic, caustic, or abrasive substances. Traditionally this is done after the glass is blown or cast, although mold-etching has replaced some forms of surface etching. The removal of minute amounts of glass causes the characteristic rough surface and translucent quality of frosted glass.

Heisey Glass Company

The A.H. Heisey Company was formed in Newark, Ohio, in 1895 by A.H. Heisey. The factory provided fine quality glass tableware and decorative glass figurines. Both pressed and blown glassware were made in a wide variety of patterns and colors. The company also made glass automobile headlights and Holophane Glassware lighting fixtures. The company was operated by Heisey and his sons until 1957, when the factory closed.

The Fostoria Glass Company was a manufacturer of pressed, blown and hand-molded glassware and tableware. It began operations in Fostoria, Ohio, on December 15, 1887, on land donated by the townspeople. The new company was formed by men from West Virginia who were experienced in the glassmaking business. They started their company in northwest Ohio to take advantage of newly discovered natural gas that was an ideal fuel for glassmaking. Numerous other businesses were also started in the area, and collectively they depleted the natural gas supply. Fuel shortages caused the company to move to Moundsville, West Virginia in 1891.

A glossary of terms used in glass art

Islamic glass

The influence of the Islamic world to the history of glass is reflected by its distribution around the world, from Europe to China, and from Russia to East Africa. Islamic glass developed a unique expression that was characterized by the introduction of new techniques and the innovation of old traditions.

Sasanian glass

Sasanian Glass is the glassware produced between the 3rd and the 7th centuries AD within the limits of the Sasanian Empire of Persia, namely present-day Northern Iraq, Iran and Central Asia. This is a silica-soda-lime glass production characterized by thick glass-blown vessels relatively sober in decoration, avoiding plain colours in favour of transparency and with vessels worked in one piece without over- elaborate amendments. Thus the decoration usually consists of solid and visual motifs from the mould (reliefs), with ribbed and deeply cut facets, although other techniques like trailing and applied motifs were practised.

Erwin Eisch German artist

Erwin Eisch is a German artist who works with glass. He is also a painter, draughtsman, and printmaker. With that of his friend and colleague in glass Harvey Littleton, Eisch's work in glass embodies the ideas of the international Studio Glass movement. Along with glass artists Sam Herman and Sybren Valkema, Eisch is considered a founder of studio glass in Europe.

Libbey, Inc., is a glass production company headquartered in Toledo, Ohio. It was originally founded 203 years ago in Cambridge, Massachusetts as the New England Glass Company in 1818, before relocating to Ohio in 1888 and renaming to Libbey Glass Co. After it was purchased in 1935, it operated as part of the Libbey-Owens-Ford company and as a division of the Owens-Illinois glass company until 1993, when it was separated back into an independent company.

Novelty Glass Company of Fostoria was one of over 70 glass manufacturing companies that operated in northwest Ohio during the region's brief Gas Boom in the late 19th century. The company made drinking glasses, bar goods, and novelties. Organization of the firm began late in 1890, with banker Rawson Crocker as president and veteran glass man Henry Crimmel as plant manager. Production started in February 1891. The plant was built on the site of the former Buttler Art Glass Company, which had been destroyed by fire in 1889.

Evidence for early glassmaking in the United States has been found of glassmaking at the English settlement on Jamestown Island, Virginia. While some glass window panes were made there after 1608, most of the windows had been shipped from England.

J. H. Hobbs, Brockunier and Company was one of the largest and best known manufacturers of glass in the United States in the 19th century. Its products were distributed world-wide. The company is responsible for one of the greatest innovations in American glassmaking—an improved formula for lime glass that enabled American glass makers to produce high-quality glass at a lower cost. The firm also developed many of the talented glassmakers that started glass factories in Ohio and Indiana.

Hartford-Empire Co. v. United States, 323 U.S. 386 (1945), was a patent-antitrust case that the Government brought against a cartel in the glass container industry. The cartel, among other things, divided the fields of manufacture of glass containers, first, into blown glass and pressed glass, which was subdivided into: products made under the suction process, milk bottles, and fruit jars. The trial court found the cartel violative of the antitrust laws and the Supreme Court agreed that the market division and related conduct were illegal. The trial court required royalty-free licensing of present patents and reasonable royalty licensing of future patents. A divided Supreme Court reversed the requirement for royalty-free licensing as "confiscatory," but sustained the requirement for reasonable royalty licensing of the patents.

Indiana Glass Company manufactured pressed, blown and hand-molded glassware and tableware for almost 100 years. Predecessors to the company began operations in Dunkirk, Indiana, in 1896 and 1904, when East Central Indiana experienced the Indiana gas boom. The start date for the company is considered 1907, when a group of investors led by Frank W. Merry formed a company to buy the Dunkirk glass plant that belonged to the bankrupt National Glass Company. National Glass was a trust for glass tableware that originally owned 19 glass factories including the plant in Dunkirk. National Glass went bankrupt in 1907, and its assets were sold in late 1908.

Cut glass Glass with geometrical incised patterns

Cut glass or cut-glass is a technique and a style of decorating glass. For some time the style has often been produced by other techniques such as the use of moulding, but the original technique of cutting glass on an abrasive wheel is still used in luxury products. On glassware vessels, the style typically consists of furrowed faces at angles to each other in complicated patterns, while for lighting fixtures, the style consists of flat or curved facets on small hanging pieces, often all over. Historically, cut glass was shaped using grinding or drilling techniques applied as a secondary stage to a piece of glass made by conventional processes such as glassblowing. Today, the glass is often mostly or entirely shaped in the initial process by using a mould, or imitated in clear plastic. Traditional hand-cutting continues, but gives a much more expensive product.

References

  1. ↑ Wilson, Kenneth M. New England Glass and Glassmaking. Corning, NY:Corning Museum of Glass, 1972., p. 273
  2. ↑ Papert, Emma. The Illustrated Guide to American Glass. New York:Hawthorn Books, 1972 p. 102
  3. ↑ Watkins, Lura Woodside. American Glass and Glassmaking. New York:Chanticleer Press, 1950., p. 27
  4. 1 2 Papert, 1972, p. 83
  5. ↑ McKearin, George S. and Helen McKearin American Glass. New York:Crown Publishing, 1948., p.18
  6. ↑ Douglas, R.W. and Susan Frank. A history of glassmaking. London and Tonbridge: The Whitefriars Press Ltd., 1972., p.3
  7. ↑ ”blow molding” Encyclopædia Britannica Online,2010. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/70079/blow-molding(retrieved 10/26/2010)
  8. ↑ Stern, E. Marianne. Roman mold-blown glass: the first through sixth centuries. Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1995., p. 46
  9. ↑ Papert, 1972, p.112
  10. ↑ Watkins, 1950, p.14
  11. ↑ Papert 1972, p.100
  12. 1 2 Watkins,1950, p.44
  13. 1 2 3 Wilson 1972, p.237
  14. ↑ McKearin, 1948, p.18
  15. 1 2 3 4 Papert 1972, p.102
  16. ↑ Watkins, 1950, p. 52
  17. 1 2 Papert 1972, p.112
  18. ↑ Watkins, 1950, p.43
  19. ↑ Watkins, 1950, p.27
  20. ↑ Watkins, 1950, p.44
  21. ↑ Papert 1972, p.104
  22. ↑ Papert 1972, p.83
  23. ↑ Papert 1972, p.108
  24. ↑ Papert 1972, p.109
  25. ↑ Watkins, 1950 p.61
  26. ↑ Papert 1972, p. 100
  27. ↑ Whitehouse, David, compiler. Glass: A pocket dictionary of terms commonly used to describe glass and glassmaking. Corning, NY:Corning Museum of Glass, 1993, p. 64
  28. ↑ Wilson,1972, p.237
  29. 1 2 Wilson, 1972, p.237
  30. ↑ Papert, 1972 p.100
  31. ↑ Lee, Ruth Webb. "Flashback: Blown Molded Glass of New England," American Collector (April 1940) reprinted online in Collectors Weekly (April 1, 2009) http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/blown-molded-glass-of-new-england/ (retrieved 10/23/2010)
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.