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American glass at Corning

Magazine Antiques, April, 2008 by Kathleen Luhrs

In the history of American glass, the Boston and Sandwich Glass Company of Sandwich, Massachusetts, holds an important place. It was hardly the earliest glass manufactory, beginning only in 1825, nor the most expensive, nor the most highly specialized, but over some sixty years the firm produced many fine products. The manufactory was founded by the Boston businessman Deming Jarves, who was the son of a prosperous Boston cabinetmaker. With the money from his inheritance in 1817, Jarves first acquired with several other men the New England Glass Company of East Cambridge, Massachusetts. Seven years later he had a large new factory built on Cape Cod, where he established his own Boston and Sandwich Glass Company.

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It is an understatement to say that Jarves was enamored of glass. He was not a glassmaker himself, but he made sure he knew all he could about its development, history, and manufacture. One of the areas in which he became directly involved at Sandwich was in the production of lighting devices. Sometimes one needs to be reminded how dark nights were in the past. Candles and oil lamps did not make much of a dent but they were essential and highly valued. The second quarter of the nineteenth-century saw enterprising inventors attempting to develop new burners and safety devices, and experimenting with different burning fluids. Meanwhile most lamps were fairly simple, although they varied widely in design and decoration. An early lighting object made by the Boston and Sandwich Glass Company is a candlestick (below left), recently acquired by the Corning Museum of Glass, in Corning, New York. What makes it particularly interesting is that it corresponds to a drawing made by Jarves in a letter to his glasshouse superintendent William Stutson on January 20, 1829, just shortly after the company had managed its first pressing of tableware. Jarves requests that seven or eight dozen of these candlesticks with a five-inch pressed-plate foot be manufactured. The design is not unlike that of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century English work. So far, however, only two such examples by this American glass company are known. The other, with a somewhat different stem, is in a private collection. The Corning example was found at an auction on Long Island several years ago, a fact that should hearten collectors of American glass who may think there is nothing left for them in the marketplace.

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Another important addition of Boston and Sandwich glass to the lighting collection at the Corning Museum is a hurricane lamp that dates from about 1840 to 1860 (above center). A handsome brass collar connects the original shade to a pressed glass base. The blown shade has a wheel-engraved grape design as does the collar. The rare base of three dolphins has been documented for opalescent and yellow glass vases, but this is the only example recorded in electric blue. Although considered a lamp, technically it is a candle fitting with a hurricane shade.

Totally unrelated to lighting, except that it sparkles on its own, is a Boston and Sandwich glass sugar bowl (below right), another new Corning acquisition. The shape and pattern of this bowl are not uncommon, and similar pieces were probably made by several makers. What makes this one interesting is that it can be dated to 1874 based on a company catalogue printed that year. Thus, while there is tableware with the same Star and Comet pattern and the same shape to be found, without this kind of documentation, it is difficult to identify the makers and dates of such pieces as this one--the first of its kind that the Corning Museum has come by.

American glass at Corning

Magazine Antiques, April, 2008 by Kathleen Luhrs

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