Early 20 Century American Lead Glass Urn

Here we have a lovely Early American Hand crafted Lead Glass Urn, unsigned and in good condition. This measures 10 inches tall, 8 inches wide at the top.

This has the typical signs of light wear and in good condition.

These are all consigned works. Sold with NO RETURN; Ask all questions before purchasing.

After several other false starts, the first successful colonial glasshouse was built by Caspar Wistar in Salem County, New Jersey, in 1739. Windows and bottles were regarded by early settlers as the most important glass products. Glass tableware was a luxury and could be imported from England and the Continent. Several other glasshouses were started during the eighteenth century, but the British discouraged manufacturing, preferring that the colonies should supply raw materials to the mother country and then purchase the resulting goods. Wistar's factory operated almost sub rosa, as did two others in operation in eastern Pennsylvania just before the American Revolution. The new nation promoted manufacturing, causing the glassmaking industry to expand rapidly in the nineteenth century.

The earliest glasshouse in the new United States was the New Bremen Glassmanufactory in Frederick, Maryland, founded in 1785 by John Frederick Amelung, a skilled glassmaker who had emigrated from Germany along with other glass workers who brought their families and equipment with them. Although Amelung's business went bankrupt in 1796, quite a few pieces that can be attributed to his glasshouse survive. He produced a number of signed glasses, and several of his unsigned engraved objects are easily recognizable.

Glassmaking crossed the Allegheny Mountains in 1797, when Albert Gallatin (later President Thomas Jefferson's secretary of the treasury) started the first glasshouse in western Pennsylvania. One of the most successful and longest-lived factories in Pittsburgh was operated by the Bakewell family and their several partners between 1808 and 1882. Bakewell, Page and Bakewell was arguably the most important of the Midwestern glasshouses. The first flint glass factory in the United States, it made a wide selection of tablewares and containers. In 1818, the Bakewell glasshouse filled President James Monroe's order for a set of glassware, and it also produced a service for President Andrew Jackson.
It was not until the 1820s, when the idea of mechanicallypressing glass into molds was conceived, that the American glass industry achieved its greatest success. We do not know who first patented this process, but patents for improvements to the technique were granted to several glassmakers, including Deming Jarves of the Boston and Sandwich Glass Company.

The glass pressing process spread quickly. In 1829, English writer James Boardman attended an exhibition of American manufactured goods in New York City. In his America, and the Americans (London, 1830), he commented 'the most novel article was the pressed glass which was far superior, both in design and execution, to anything of the kind I have ever seen in London or elsewhere. The merit of its invention is due to the Americans and it is likely to prove one of great national importance.' Boardman's prophecy would prove accurate. The pressing industry continued to grow rapidly, permitting American makers of glass tableware to compete successfully with European manufacturers. By the 1840s, many shapes and patterns were being produced, and housewives were being persuaded that they needed matching sets of wineglasses. Following the introduction of natural gas as a furnace fuel in the 1870's, the production of pressed glass tableware increased markedly in Ohio and western Pennsylvania.

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