American colonial glass

Early attempts to introduce glassmaking to the American colonies were not successful, and it was not until the mid 18^th century that glasshouses of any note or longevity were established. The two that deserve most attention were founded by Casper Wistar in New Jersey and Henry William Stiegel in Pennsylvania.

Wistar glass

Casper Wistar was a German who moved in 1717 to Pennsylvania, where he established a factory to make brass buttons. He used the profits from this business to buy land in southern New Jersey where he built a glassworks, importing glassmakers from Germany and the Netherlands to run it.

The main output of the factory was window glass and glass bottles, but the workers also got into the habit of using “end of day” glass to make pieces of tableware, primarily for their own use and for local sale. These items were usually plain and utilitarian, but were sometimes decorated with finials in animal or bird shapes to represent styles that would have been familiar to the makers from what they had known back in Europe.

These pieces, with their strong Germanic influence, gave rise to what is known as “South Jersey Type” glass, the tradition of which later spread northwards to New York and New England.

Casper Wistar died in 1752 and the factory was continued by his son Richard until 1780, when, being unable to find a buyer for the business, he closed it down. One difficulty with identifying Wistar glass is that Richard acted as not only a manufacturer but also an importer, selling products that came from factories abroad, most notably England, as well as his own glassworks.

Stiegel glass

Henry William Stiegel was a German from Cologne (born in 1729) who arrived in Pennsylvania in 1750 and married the daughter of an ironmaster. He took over his father-in-law’s ironworks, at Shaefferstown, in 1758 and rebuilt it as “Elizabeth Furnace”, named after his wife. The profits from iron making were used to establish a glasshouse alongside the Furnace, and in 1765 he established a purpose-built factory at Manheim, near Lancaster PA. Here he made tableware as well as bottles and window glass. A third glasshouse, also at Manheim, was built and extended between 1768 and 1771.

Stiegel employed around 150 workers (mainly brought over from England and Germany) at the peak of production, making a variety of glass objects that constituted the earliest examples of fine tableware produced in America. The products included both plain and coloured glass, some with engraving and enamelling. The products were sold throughout New England and some found their way to the West Indies.

However, Stiegel was not able to continue the success and went bankrupt in 1774, spending some time in a debtors’ prison. He died in 1785.

The problem noted above with regard to Wistar glass, namely that of identifying pieces produced at the factory, is even worse when dealing with Stiegel glass. The output of the factories was closely controlled, such that the pieces show little individuality and followed patterns that were popular either with customers who had settled in Pennsylvania from Germany or those of English extraction further north. Many pieces sold in the colonies were imported from Europe and are virtually indistinguishable from locally made products.

Many Stiegel pieces were pattern-moulded to give the outer surface bumps and dimples, often in coloured glass. This technique was carried westward in later years to create what became known as the “Stiegel Tradition” long after Stiegel’s factories had closed down. Many such pieces were copied from patterns familiar from imported European styles.

One pattern that is unmistakably Stiegel’s is a daisy design in a diamond or hexagonal pattern, on glass pocket bottles, which is unknown as belonging to any European factory. These bottles were manufactured at Manheim between 1769 and 1774.

Stiegel also produced enamelled tumblers and mugs to a pattern well known in Germany. However, the fact that slogans were inscribed in English on glassware that was identical to contemporary wares made in Germany suggests that they were imported and then enamelled at the Stiegel factory. These would have found a ready market among the large population of German immigrants in Pennsylvania.

Collections of early American blown glass, and similar European wares, can be seen at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Corning Museum of Glass (New York), the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and elsewhere.  

© John Welford