What Do Mason Jars Have to Do with the Erie Canal?

 

QUESTION: I’ve been collecting old mason jars for a while. Recently, I found a blue one at a flea market. Embossed on the front of it are the words “The Clyde.” The letters “CGW” appear on the bottom. I haven’t been able to find any information about this jar. Can you help me?

ANSWER: It appears that you found an old Mason jar made by the Clyde Glass Works of Clyde, New York, in 1895.

When New York Governor DeWitt Clinton proposed the Erie Canal that would cross the state, linking the Hudson River with the Great Lakes, people sarcastically called it "Clinton’s Big Ditch." A construction project of that magnitude, completed entirely by hand labor, seemed impossible. But by July 4, 1817, construction of the canal had begun. It wasn’t until October 26, 1825 that a canal boat made the first full-length voyage on the new canal.

Frederick Augustus Dezeng, an immigrant from Saxony, Germany, who operated a window glass factory near Geneva, New York, was a good friend of Governor Clinton. He understood the importance of being able to transport goods by water from Lake Erie all the way to New York City via the Hudson River. But more importantly, he realized that shipping his glass by canal boat would be safer and cause less breakage. Even carefully packed, glass didn’t  travel well in horse-drawn carts over bumpy dirt roads of unpredictable condition.

 saw the potential of doing business via the Erie Canal. Access to firewood to fuel the glass furnaces was a major reason, as was the ease of packet boats bringing in sand from Oneida, New York, along with quantities of potash lime via the Canal. He encouraged his  youngest of five children, William, to set up a glassworks along the Canal in nearby Laurelville, which later changed its name to Clyde.

William S. Dezeng and his brother-in-law, James R. Rees, went into partnership to open a glass factory to make cylinder window glass in 1827. They laid the cornerstone for their new enterprise on March 27, 1828, and the factory began production that year. A newspaper advertisement from 1833 promoted the firm’s glass as  first quality and free from imperfections. This was a major achievement in itself since up to that time window glass had many imperfections. In the process, a glassblower blew molten glass into a cylinder, then cut it it open and annealed it to flatten it out. However, ripples and small bubbles in the finished glass were almost unavoidable.

Orrin Southwick and Almon Wood, calling their glass business Southwick & Wood, built the first bottle factory in Clyde in 1864. Wood apparently withdrew to be replaced by Charles W. Reed to form the firm of Southwick & Reed—sometime between 1864 and 1868.

About 1868, Southwick, Reed & Company merged the bottle and window glass plants into a single unit. Unfortunately, the factory burned on July 24, 1873, but they rebuilt it  immediately.

Sometime during the following year, Clyde gained a license from the Consolidated Fruit Jar Company to produce Mason Patent jars. Since there were many fruit jars bearing the “CFJCo” monogram, their jars had “CLYDE, N.Y.” embossed on either the front or the back of each jar. When Consolidated apparently sold its fruit-jar interests to Hero around 1882, Clyde lost a major portion of its business.

In 1880, the owners of Southwick, Reed & Company incorporated as the Clyde Glass Works. By this time, Clyde was making soda and beer bottles, liquor flasks, and fruit jars, commonly referred to as Mason jars, marked with one of the Clyde logos. They produced quart jars in amber, aqua, cobalt blue, and clear glass but only made pint size jars in aqua.

Between 1868 and 1895, the Clyde Glass Works produced five different Mason jars—The Clyde, written in cursive, the CLYDE LIGHTNING and the CLYDE MASON’S IMPROVED, both embossed in all uppercase letters and made for the Consolidated Fruit Jar Company.

The Mason jar first appeared in the 1850s when John Landis Mason, a tinsmith from Vineland, New Jersey, was searching for a way to improve the relatively new process of home canning. Until then, home canning involved using wax to create an airtight seal above food. Users stopped the jars with corks, sealed them with wax, then boiled them. It was messy process and hardly foolproof.

In 1857, a 26-year-old Mason invented and patented threaded screw-top jars. The earliest Mason jars were made from transparent aqua glass. But Mason didn’t patent the rest of his invention—the rubber ring on the underside of the flat metal lids that created the airtight seal, which made wax unnecessary. By 1868, many glass companies were producing Mason jars. Including Southwick, Reed and Company. Though Mason tried to regain control of his invention after various court cases and failed business partnerships, he gave up.

Clyde Glass Works produced a clear Mason jar embossed with “The Clyde” in upwardly slanted cursive letters from 1895 to 1915. It was handmade with an old-style Lightning closure. Those jars with ground lips had narrow mouths while those with smooth lips had a regular size mouth. 

The firm first made these jars in 1895 to commemorate its incorporation as the Clyde Glass Works. By 1903, it had purchased new machines for making fruit jars but only used them to make jars until sometime during the following year. 

A jar, embossed with “CLYDE / LIGHTNING” on the side was a blown jar of green glass with a ground rim and sealed with an old-style Lightning closure. The "Lightning" toggle or swing-type closure had widespread use on a lot of different bottle types, though its primary use was on bottles for carbonated beverages, such as soda and beer, and canning jars. However, the sealing surface for these two main types of Lightning-type closures was different. Charles de Quillfeldt of New York City invented and patented this type of bottle or jar closure on January 5, 1875.  He originally intended his design to be used on beverage bottles but later altered it to use on canning or Mason jars.

Variations of the Mason jar include the "Improved Mason" which sealed on a shoulder above the thread instead of below. The Clyde Glass Works produced the Clyde Mason’s Improved jar by hand and embossed “CLYDE,” “IMPROVED,” “MASON” in three separate lines.

Out of 59 bottles identified as being made by Clyde, fifty-one were in the arched format—the arch and inverted arch. 

The glass works at Clyde, New York, had a long and varied history. Although it’s almost certain that Clyde never marked the majority of its containers, certain types of both bottles and jars were clearly identified as being produced at the plant. The earliest of these were jars, the Mason’s Improved jars with “S&W” and “SW&Co” embossed on the bottom edge came from the Southwick & Reed and Southwick, Reed & Company factories, respectively. These were almost certainly the earliest marked jars, made from 1864 to 1870. 

From 1870 to 1882, the factory made the Mason’s Patent and Mason’s Improved jars, embossed with the CFJCo monogram on the front and “CLYDE, N.Y.” on the reverse. Jars made between 1882 and 1890 didn’t have Clyde logos on them. The plant made The Clyde from 1890 to 1910, and produced the Clyde Mason’s Improved jar from 1895 to 1915. Lackluster sales forced the Clyde Glass Works to close in 1915.

The age, rarity, color, and condition of an antique Mason jar greatly influence its value.  A jar's age and rarity can be determined by the color, shape, mold and production marks of the glass, and the jar's closure. Mason jars usually have a proprietary brand embossed on the jar. Early jars embossed with "Mason's Patent November 28th 1858" that date from the late 1850s to early 1860s closely match the illustrations of Mason's 1858 patents. While the Clyde Glass Works’ Mason jars sell online for anywhere from $15 to $75, those embossed with the words “The Clyde” usually sell for higher prices.

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Pack 'Em Up

QUESTION: As I was sorting through things in my attic, I came across a couple of old wooden crates. One of them has "National Beer" written on the side in fancy letters while the other seems to have been for packing pears. Are these just junk or should I consider using them in some way? Do they have any value at all?

ANSWER: Today, we have all sorts of plastic containers to hold foods and other goods. But back in the good ole days—as late as the 1930s—goods came packed in wooden crates. Everyone knows the colorful ones used by the fruit industry to pack fresh fruit, but, in fact, there were as many different crates as their were products sold in general stores.

Old wooden crates tend to evoke feelings of nostalgia—of the simple, good life. And thanks to interior decorators, they’ve become a versatile source of inspiration for creative furniture, decorative home accents, and inventive storage solutions.

Wooden crates go back to the time of the general store. Norman Rockwell reminded everyone of the nostalgia of those bygone days in his paintings, depicting men sitting by a warm, pot-bellied stove in the general store, smoking a pipe, reading a newspaper, with a dozing dog stretched out on the floor. In the 19th and early 20th century, especially in rural locations, the general store acted not only as a source of dry goods and food ingredients, but as a social center as well.

Like the modern supermarket, the general store sold the essentials for living. Storekeepers displayed their goods mostly in packing crates with the lids pried off, so customers could buy the contents straight from the crate. Everyone knew what was in each box because each crate showed its contents in bold stenciling on the sides or with a brightly colored paper label.

Lucky customers may have been able to wrangle a packing crate from the storekeeper and turn it into a handy kitchen cabinet, bookcase, or vegetable rack. People back then reused everything, and wooden crates were no exception.

More unusual, and highly sought after, are the pieces of folk art furniture built around these boxes`making them into extremely decorative storage units for collections of anything from fishing lures to rubber stamps and other paraphernalia.

In the early part of the 20th century these units were made by encasing wooden cheese boxes or Baker's' chocolate boxes, adding knobs and a coat of paint. Men made these utilitarian storage units to keep their woodworking or metalworking bits and pieces together in one place.

In the last quarter of the 20th century these engaging folk art pieces have become highly prized, usually expensive, decorator items for a country look in the home. They now take their place in sitting rooms, dining rooms and kitchens, no longer relegated to the work room or garage.

In 1847, a stamping process became available that produced tin cans cheaply. Canneries proved to be invaluable during the Civil War and just five years after the war, 34 million cans of food were on the market throughout the United States. By 1878 canning factories proliferated all over the country, and almost every type of food could be found in a can. Many of the early cans were decorative and made in fanciful shapes to induce sales as some people were suspicious of canned foods. Canneries shipped their products in nothing other than wooden stenciled crates.

By the 1880s there were almost four million farms and about half of the world's annual yield of precious metals being panned or mined in America. More and more factories  turned out packaged goods such as whiskey, soap, stoves, clocks, watches and cast-iron items like doorstops and banks, as well as pots and skillets, for the home. All these goods came packed in wooden crates.

By the end of that decade, refrigerated railroad cars were hauling fruits and vegetables from California and Florida to New York. Seafood traveled to Chicago and freighters  carried food goods around the world. For the first time, Easterners could buy Hawaiian pineapples and Maine residents could buy Florida fruit.  All shipped in wooden cases with brightly colored labels. Today, these are all very collectible.

Soon catalogs, known as “Farmer's Bibles" and "The Nation's Wishbook," appeared. Each new issue contained even more and better things. These books changed the way America shopped in the late 19th century. The railroad depot replaced the general store, as people awaited the delivery of their large goods by freight train. One thing that didn’t change was that goods still came in wooden crates.

Of all the old-time packaging methods, the one that has mostly been ignored by collectors is wooden crates. It's true that for many years, decorators have been taking apart early shipping crates and just using the stenciled sides or ends to create "atmosphere" both in homes and restaurants. However, it has only been in the last few years that collectors have recognized the historical significance, decorating possibilities, and value of these wooden boxes from a bygone age.