Sweets for the Sweet

QUESTION: My aunt collected small glass candy containers. Because I always admired them, she gave them to me when she moved to a retirement community. I really don’t know anything about them. What can you tell me about these containers? Are they still being made?

ANSWER: That was nice of your aunt to think of you. Because of your interest, she probably felt that you might not only care for her collection, but add to it.

Several manufacturers, mostly located around Jeannette, Pennsylvania, produced glass toy candy containers in America for 90 years. Although many of them originally sold for about a dime, they now range in price from $5 to $5,000. There are nearly 600 different containers known to exist. About 14 companies distributed them in America.

The use of glass candy containers began in Philadelphia at the Centennial Exposition of 1876 where confectioner Wilbur Croft and Company produced candies in Machinery Hall. Croft sold his candy in clear glass containers shaped like the Liberty Bell. With a pewter screw-on closure and a paper label on the bottom, collectors consider this bell to be the first American glass toy candy container, currently valued around $200.

One of the primary makers of glass candy containers was Westmoreland Specialty Company,  operated by brothers George and Charles West in Grapeville, Pennsylvania. They built their factory in 1889 and produced nearly 100 different candy containers through 1932, each made by hand in single molds, with some being hand-painted. The factory also made tin closures and other parts needed to produce complete containers.

Though candy containers started as souvenirs with simple designs, they evolved into great glass toys filled with candy. One of Westmoreland's early souvenirs, dated 1896, featured a painted milk glass Uncle Sam hat that doubled as a bank. It had paper portraits of Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt glued onto a slotted metal closure, and now brings about $125.

In 1913, as designs became more intricate, Westmoreland produced several glass candy container lamps that held a candle and a lithographed paper and cardboard shade. There were Christmas, Easter and Valentine lamps as well as three novelty lamps featuring a tree trunk base with an embossed rabbit, hatchet or cherries.

By producing candy containers such as Charlie Chaplin, the Spirit of St. Louis airplane, Jackie Coogan, the Carpet Sweeper and the Phonograph, Westmoreland took advantage of popular people or new inventions to increase sales of the glass toys.

Manufacturers produced most candy containers of clear glass so the colorful candy could be seen, but Westmoreland used some colored glass in 1927 to attract buyers. It made the Spirit of St. Louis in clear, amber, pink, green and blue, and its Pointed Nose Racer, which now sells for about $2,500, in several colors, also.

One of the most valuable Westmoreland containers is a functional tin kaleidoscope featuring a turning glass tube filled with candy, estimated to be worth $5,000 or more. Another unusual container is a 31-inch-long whip made of cloth-covered wire with a candy-filled glass handle.



Westmoreland also made some glass containers and tin parts for Turney H. Stough of Jeannette, another major player in the candy container industry.

Stough produced more than 100 different glass containers, which is more than any other company. Candy containers comprised more than 95 percent of  Stough's business. He hired outside firms to produce everything he needed while his company did the assembly, packaging and distribution.

Like Stough, George Borgfeldt & Co., a New York City toy wholesaler, hired Westmoreland and other companies to produce)le its candy containers. Some of Borgfeldt's most sought-after containers are pieces of Flossie Fisher's furniture, dating from around 1916. Based on a cartoon in Ladies' Home Journal, the yellow tin bed, table, chairs and other items featured black silhouettes of animals and children. The bed alone sells for over $2,500. From 1913 to 1916,  L.E. Smith of Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, produced only about 20 to 30 different candy containers, including a bureau, a mantel clock, a flat iron and a figural container of Charlie Chaplin, all hard to find today.

A former Westmoreland employee founded the Victory Glass Company, also of Jeannette, which produced nearly 100 different containers from 1919 to 1955. Not having an in-house tin shop like Westmoreland, Victory relied on intricate glass designs, like the Swan Boat and the Amos and Andy Taxi, to make its candy containers attractive and appealing.Two of Victory's hard to find containers are the Refrigerator with short legs, which sells for about $4,000, and Dolly's Bathtub, which sells for about $3,000.

In 1940 J.H. Millstein, a worker at Victory Glass, developed fully automatic machines to speed up production and lower costs. Millstein opened his factory in 1943 with machines that could handle 12 molds at a time. Though he only made 13 different containers from 1943 to 1956, he produced and sold millions of them.

Unfortunately, World War II brought rising production costs to the industry. Candy containers became basic again as companies cut costs with simpler designs, less hand-painting and fewer intricate metal parts switching from tin closures to paper or card-board. By 1956 only two companies were still making candy containers. Though Millstein and Stough produced some plastic containers around 1967, high production costs and declining sales closed the remaining factories making glass candy containers.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Article section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the other 18,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about Colonial America in the Spring 2018 Edition, "EArly Americana," online now.

Like a Bowlful of Jelly

QUESTION: Recently, I’ve begun to collect jelly molds. The ones I’m finding are mostly newer, but I’d like to perhaps add some older ones to my collection. Unfortunately, I don’t know much about these molds, except that many were not made to mold jelly as many people know it today. What can you tell me about the old jelly molds? Why did they come to be?

ANSWER: If you say jelly, most people think of fruit jellies in jars. While some people still make their own, the majority of people buy theirs at their local supermarket. Brands like Smuckers and Welch’s have become synonymous with jelly. But early jelly molds contained mostly other types of foods.

White earthenware jelly molds, particularly those produced in England around the turn of the 20tº century, are some of the most widely collected of all food molds. Although jelly molds have been produced in a variety of materials, including copper, tin, redware, yellowware, graniteware, cast iron, aluminum and plastic, over the last several hundred years, it’s the white earthenware ones that collectors favor. Cooks used these molds to form aspics, sweet jellies, mousses, and steamed puddings.

Historians believe the use of jellies began in medieval England, when people prepared the earliest of puddings, called blancmange, literally "white food,” from boiled milk and ground almonds, sometimes flavored with fish or poultry. Flummery, an oatmeal believed to have been the first food actually set in wooden molds, appeared during the late 17`º or early 18'"century.

Cooks prepared the earliest jellies---technically, aspics, being savory rather than sweet --with gelatin they obtained from cows' feet and sheep's heads, which they flavored with meat extracts. They used shavings from deer antlers to make hartshorn jelly. They employed Isinglass — a natural substance obtained from the air bladders of certain fish, and containing about 90 percent gelatin—to help improve the setting qualities of jellied foods. When cooks created the first aspics in the 18th century, the scope and use of molds broadened considerably.





By the 18th century, sugar had become widely available, and sweet jellies became popular. Cooks used wines, fruit juices and nuts used as flavorings, and colored their jellies with boiled down plants and other natural sources, including insects. The most common colors were lemon yellow, orange, ,and violet. People used individual bowls  or glasses until about the mid-1700s, when molds became larger.



One of the main suppliers of earthenware jelly molds was Wedgwood. Although best known for decorative pieces, Wedgwood produced many jelly molds. The company’s two-part "core molds" from the 18th century were well suited to translucent jellies. These molds remained in place once a cook unmolded the jelly. The hand-painted enameled designs on the inner core were visible through, and magnified by, the jelly, making for a handsome display. Wedgwood intended these jellied creations only as table decorations, not for consumption. Other Wedgwood molds featured classical and Egyptian themes, animal and birds, Prince of Wales' feathers, and the emblems of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The firm designed molds with eagle and corn-on-the-cob motifs for the American market.

In the 19th century, middle-class housewives began to use jelly molds. Molds came in a wide variety of shapes, including geometric forms, with their designs of swirls, tiers, and/or spirals, and . "architectural" styles. Architectural molds incorporated 18th and 19th century neo-classical building elements such as grooved columns, acanthus leaves, pieces of egg-and-dart molding, and rounded ornamental knobs. Various fruit, flowers, wheat, corn and animal patterns were also abundant. Cooks used many molds from this period for all kinds of food, from rice to ice cream to pudding. They used some pudding molds to steam or bake in while they used others for chilling and setting pudding that they had cooked in a saucepan. Generally, pudding molds intended for baking or steaming had a tube or spout in the center, much like an angel food cake pan, to allow for more even cooking.

Minton produced pyramid jelly molds as early as 1824. Historians believe these molds to have been two-part core molds similar to those produced by Wedgwood. Minton's 1884 catalog illustrates 63 different molds, featuring recumbent lions, crowns, wheat sheaves, shells, grapes, pineapples, other fruits, fishes, and florals. They also made  architectural molds. Minton molds often have a foot rim, a bluish tinge and no mark.

Another notable manufacturer was W.T. Copeland, a company that produced a prolific number of molds well in the 20th century, including architecturally inspired designs,  various fruits, chickens, bears, dolphins, and conch shells.

By the late 1880s, when advances in printing made colored cookbook illustrations possible, aspiring hostesses could prepare luscious-looking molded dishes. Using exotic molds such as those in Copeland's catalog, cooks used differently colored gelatins, as well as bits of food placed in the mold to create an attractively patterned surface when they turned out the jelly.

The Victorian era was the heyday of the jelly mold. When World War I began, may firms went out of business. Instant gelatin desserts, such as "JELL-O", took much of the work out of making molded desserts and the status as well.

NOTE: The title of this blog comes from the poem “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” by Clement Clarke Moore, published in 1823. Most people probably never would connect a “bowlful” of jelly with jelly molds, but prior to the poem’s creation, many people used bowls to molded their jellies.
 
To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Article section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the other 18,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about Colonial America in the Spring 2018 Edition, "EArly Americana," online now.

Good Night, Sleep Tight

QUESTION: My mother was an avid tea drinker, so she began to collect teapots. While she had some nice ones in her collection, she didn’t focus on value as much as she did on what she liked. She passed away last year, and I inherited her teapot collection. I, too, love to drink tea. I think I’d like to enhance her collection, now mine, by focusing on unique or unusual teapots, culling out the ordinary and focusing on the extraordinary. Recently, I bought an unusual teapot at a flea market. The dealer said that it was a “nightlight” teapot. I had never heard of such a thing, but she said she really didn’t know much about it. What exactly is a nightlight teapot and how does it differ from an ordinary one?

ANSWER: First, let me congratulate you on planning to enhance your mother’s teapot collection and take it as your own. Too many people who inherit someone else’s collection either sell it off or stash it away. They become the caretaker of the collection, not the curator.

I, too, never heard of a nightlight teapot until recently. Basically, it’s a bedside porcelain teapot that sits on a warming stand. The light from an oiled wick or tiny candle not only kept the tea warm but also served as a nightlight since the light from the flame flickered through the vents and through the porcelain, itself.

During the 18th century, like now, people often enjoyed sipping warm cups of tea just before retiring for the night. So bedside porcelain teapots became wedding gifts. In the days before electrical lighting, they served a dual purpose. They not only allowed people to take some sips of warm tea at bedtime but also emitted a soft diffused glow. People referred to these teapots as veilleuse-theieres.

The earliest veilleuses, used as food warmers for porridge, soup, or an invalid's drink in sick rooms or hospitals, had a bowl instead of a teapot on a stand. Later, the teapot replaced the bowl and veilleuse-theirres came into use. The French used them as a way of brewing and serving tisane, an floral or herb tea, to restless babies during the night. Not only did they offer a warm liquid for a restless infant or sick person, but also  afforded a night light in the sick room long before electricity. Most were translucent, making them useful as well as ornamental.

People filled a small boat-shaped or rounded vessel known as a "godet" with nut or vegetable oil, then floated a wick on top. Not only was the porcelain translucent, it also had been tempered to withstand heat for a long period.

By 1830, veilleuses made for the wealthy began to be more ornate and decorative, with some in the form of figurines or personages and others with insignia or crests.

Between nine and twelve inches tall, some of them looked exactly like what they were—teapots seated on warriors, fine ladies poised with fans, and monks clutching wine bottles. Others had smooth facades decorated with historical and literary scenes.

Although made for 100 years, between 1750 and 1860, information about veilleuses is hard to find. Most references simply document where someone purchased them, not their place of manufacture. Most of the factories that produced them didn’t place identifying marks on the bottom, making them extremely hard to identify.

Veilleuse-théières reveal ingenuity, attention to detail, and their creators’ sense of humor. Noses of the grotesques serve as spouts, as do the upraised hands of some figurine-styled pieces. One teapot made to look like a cottage had a cat perched on the roof that served as its handle.

Because of their fragile nature and their continual use, few veilleuse-theieres have survived.

Veilleuse-theieres sometimes mimic their origins. A delicate, skylark green, fluted teapot and pedestal veilleuse, translucent as an oriental lantern, hails from Hong Kong. A brown slated “roof” teapot tops a veilleuse-theieres that, down to its French advertisements, resembles a Parisian kiosk. A white and gold laced Gothic style veilleuse-theiere recalls windows of the great French cathedrals. Other architectural veilleuse-theieres include a towering turret, a quadrangular Normandy house, and a Spanish windmill.

Veilleuses also came in the shapes of all sorts of animals. A gold encrusted Spanish pig grotesque, its snout poised to pour, displays a scroll depicting scenes of Hades. A Siamese elephant, dashing in candy striped pants and blue waistcoat, pours from his nose. A tasseled Tunisian camel rests en route, while his mistress peeks out from her curtained howdah.

Many veilleuse-theieres are figural, bearing no outward resemblance to teapots at all. Some are pure whimsey. A rosy cheeked cupid, draped in blue splendor and cradling a golden pitcher, for example, sat astride a long-haired goat. A maiden straddled a fearsome, multi-colored dolphin.

Other figurals, however, appeared more realistic. A Turkish turbaned warrior twisted his mustache while fingering twin daggers in his cummerbund. An inscrutable, mustachioed Chinese Mandarin proffered a china tea cup on high. A courtesan, enticing in gilded and ruffled petticoats, fluttered her fan. All of these, at first glance, are simply exquisite porcelain creations. Yet somewhere underneath their cunning and fanciful features, lay utilitarian teapots combined with night lights.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Article section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the other 18,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about Colonial America in the Spring 2018 Edition, "EArly Americana," online now.