Glassware for the Rich and Famous

QUESTION: My mother was extremely proud of her good glassware and china, which originally belonged to her mother. She would lovingly take it out of her china closet for each special holiday dinner. Boy, how those glasses did shine. I’ve always wondered about what type of glassware this was. My grandmother particularly liked cut glass, and these glasses—water goblets, wine, champagne, etc—had delicate floral designs cut into them. Some told me that they may have been made by the Seneca Glass Company, but I’m not sure. What can you tell me about this company and the glassware that they produced?


ANSWER: From the photo you sent, I can definitely tell you that your grandmother had fine taste, for these pieces are definitely by Seneca Glass. By the early 1920s, the company offered a new line of deep-etched glassware. Your grandmother’s pieces most likely were in this group.

In 1891, a group of immigrant glass artisans and businessmen from Germany's Black Forest region settled in Seneca, Ohio. Seeking to take advantage of the opportunities available in the American glass market, they purchased the former Fostoria Glass Company factory and established the Seneca Glass Company, named after the county where the factory stood and the local Indian tribe of the same name.

But the lure of cheap natural gas, free land, abundant quality glass sand within easy reach, and a city subsidy was too much to resist, so the owners moved the company to Morgantown, West Viriginia. in 1896. They kept the name and over time, the firm
developed a reputation for creating some of the finest lead crystal glassware available anywhere.

Embassies used it, Eleanor Roosevelt bought it, and Americans with finer taste and a pocketbook to match loved it. Seneca produced quality, delicate, mold-blown glassware in a wide variety of forms for the next 86 years. It became known for its striking cut glass patterns. Some of the patterns were so complex, they took an experienced cutter 12 hours to complete. Later years, company owners boasted that Seneca had more than1,000 cut glass patterns available.

Popularity grew quickly as the word got out in social circles. Large-scale retail stores all over the country began ordering Seneca products. Over the years, Seneca Glass received orders from B. Altman's and Tiffany's in New York, Marshall Fields and Company in Chicago, Neiman-Marcus in Dallas, the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Boston, and the Sheraton Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Philadelphia's highly regarded John Wanamaker Department Store, placed an order for 218 dozen glassware items, all cut with the crest of the president of Liberia which the company planed to sell him for his executive mansion.

Not to be outdone by private organizations and foreign powers, the U.S. State Department ordered Seneca crystal for 30 American embassies and consulates in 1944 and 1945.

While searching for glassware for a special occasion, Eleanor Roosevelt chose stems in an obsolete Seneca pattern, being sold at the reduced price of 25 cents each. These she chose over patterns offered by the store's staff from famous firms, expensive glassware items priced in excess of $50 a dozen. Mrs. Roosevelt used her bargain Seneca glassware at a State dinner held in honor of England's King George VI.

Mrs. Roosevelt wasn’t the last person associated with the White House to order Seneca glass. Ladybird Johnson purchased peach champagne glasses in Seneca’s Epicure pattern for Vice President Lyndon Johnson. Each glass had the vice president's initials, LBJ, and an Open Road Stetson hat, her husband's trademark headgear, etched on it.  Jacqueline Kennedy also used Seneca glassware in the White House.
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Today, Seneca glassware is highly prized and actively sought by an ever-growing group of collectors with impeccable taste.

Seneca’s glassware was handmade and mold blown. Glass blowers produced such glassware by first gathering a small, molten blob of glass on the end of a hollow pipe or rod. By plowing through the pipe and manipulating it in certain ways, a glass worker would pre-shape the slowly cooling, glowing mass. The blower then inserted the pre-shaped "gather" into an iron mold—a mold that a skilled Seneca artisan had produced. Blowing into the pipe forced the hot glass to conform to the shape of the inside of the mold.

Depending on the specific object being produced, several operations could follow. For example, on stemware, the molding of the stem and foot might be done with forms and paddles or an intricate stem might be produced using a mold. Once the glass worker formed an item, he annealed or reheated it and allowed it to cool gradually and uniformly to avoid uneven cooling that would shatter the glass in an oven called a lehr. Other workers would then send the cooled object on for finishing, including the removal of excess glass, grinding and polishing.

One glass decorating technique, the “optic,” directly involved the shape of the interior of the mold itself. The interior of the mold could be shaped in panels, pillars, spirals, swags, and other interesting shapes. These shapes become part of the shape of the body of the glass formed in the optic mold. Seneca used this technique to create a variety of pleasing optics.

Seneca also produced wares decorated with needle and plate etchings and sandblasted decorations. Artisans also used other decorative techniques, including banding and metallic decorations. While elegantly cut lead crystal would be what came to consumers' minds first when they thought of Seneca glass, the company did offer a variety of colored glassware. The quantities of colorful glasses and tablewares available fluctuated over the decades, reflecting changes in public taste. Colored glassware would be offered in larger amounts during the later years, beginning around the 1960s.
   
Some of Seneca's specific glassware forms included goblets, sherbets or champagnes, cocktails, oyster cocktails, sherries, wine glasses, clarets, and cordial glasses classified as "stemware;" ice teas, hi-balls, old fashioneds, juices, and water glasses grouped as "tumblers;" along with a variety of decorative glassware" or "artware," including bowls, candle-holders, and vases.

 To read more articles on antiques, please visit 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 the Victorians in the Winter 2018 Edition, "All Things Victorian," online now. 

Souvenir of a Loved One

QUESTION: I recently attended an antiques show at which one of the dealers had a beautiful display of antique hair mourning jewelry. What can you tell me about this unique art form? Is it still practiced today?

ANSWER:  Mourning jewelry was a souvenir to remember a loved one, a reminder to the living of the inevitability of death, and a status symbol, especially during the Victorian Era.

The earliest examples of mourning jewelry originated in Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries. People often set black-and-white enameled heads or skulls into rings and brooches. In the 17th' and 18th centuries hair became a status symbol to present mourning rings to friends and families of the bereaved.

Mourning jewelry reached its peak popularity in England after the death of Prince Albert in December 1861. Queen Victoria went into deep mourning, which her subjects imitated when faced with their own bereavement:.















Hair, a symbol of life, has been associated with death and funerals in many cultures Egyptian tomb paintings portray scenes showing pharaohs and queens exchanging hair balls as tokens of enduring love.

But it was in Sweden that commercial hairwork began centuries later. The craft of hairwork spread throughout Europe. Jewelers made beautifully detailed landscapes and floral designs using human hair. In England in the late 18th century they bordered early neo-classical style pieces with seed pearls surrounding the words "In Memorium" and a panel of simple, twisted hair. During the 19th century, Queen Victoria presented Empress Eugene with a bracelet of her own hair, and the Queen recorded in her diary that the Empress was "touched to tears."

The 1853 Crystal Palace Exposition featured a full line of hair jewelry, as well as a full tea set made entirely of hair. By the 1850s hair was an expensive commodity with a variety of commercial uses. Every spring hair merchants visited fairs and markets throughout Europe where they offered young girls ribbons, combs and trinkets in exchange for their hair.

Hair jewelry caught on in the United States by the 1860s. During the Civil War, soldiers would leave a lock of their hair with their families as they left home to join the fight. Upon the soldier's death, the family would often have the hair made into a piece of mourning jewelry or placed in a locket. These were gold or black, and were sometimes engraved with "In Memory Of" and the initials or names of the deceased.

Beginning in the 1850s through the 1900s, hairwork became a drawing room pastime. Godey's Lady's Book and Peterson's Magazine gave instructions and patterns for making brooches, cuff links and bracelets at home. To further the craze for the home-based craft, Godey's reminded readers that while mourning etiquette said that women should only wear jet jewelry for first mourning, for the second mourning, a woman could wear a brooch and bracelet made of hair with a gold and black enamel clasp. Even a watch chain or plain gold belt buckle was permissible for widowers to wear if made of hair or if it enclosed hair.

Women did hairwork on a round table. Depending on the height of the table, it could be done sitting or standing. Women's work tables were usually 32 or 33 inches high, and men's tables stood 4 feet. Preparation was important. The hair had to be boiled in soda water for 15 minutes. It was then sorted into lengths and divided into strands of 20 to 30 hairs. Most pieces of jewelry required long hair. For example, a full-size bracelet called for hair 20 to 24 inches long. Sometimes horse hair was used because it was coarser than human hair, and thus easier for beginners.



Women made almost all hairwork around a old or firm material. Snake bracelets and brooches, spiral earrings and other fancy hair forms required special molds which local wood turners made for them. The women attached the mold to the center hole in the worktable. Then they wound the hair on a series of bobbins. They  attached weights to the braid work to maintain the correct level and to keep the hair straight. When they finished and while the work was still around the mold, they removed the hair and the mold, boiled it for 15 minutes, then dried and removed the hair from the mold. It was then ready to be sent to a jewelers for mounting.

The use of mourning jewelry slowly died out at the beginning of the 20th century. Hair jewelry and other forms of hairwork were particularly popular during the 19th century but are still practiced today as a home craft.

 To read more articles on antiques, please visit 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 the Victorians in the Winter 2018 Edition, "All Things Victorian," online now. 

Giving New Life Through Restoration

QUESTION: For years I also collected antiquities. Now I have a particular passion of writing boxes or old English boxes. I enjoy to restore by myself. I beg to ask for an opinion. I attach here two photos. On the lid, at the corners, something is missing! Do you think the angles were made of brass? Or in wood ... or mother of pearl? I doubt it because the thickness is a lot (about 3 mm.) Then I had never seen the brass corners that did not go vertically.

ANSWER: The corners on your box would have been brass, so if you can find someone to make these for you, they should be easy to replace. Be sure to glue them with a strong glue. Box makers usually used brass on the corners of better boxes to protect them while traveling. Victorians took writing and other types of boxes along on long trips so that they could communicate to their friends and family back home. It’s not unusual to find boxes from this time period in poor condition. Restoring them is not as difficult as doing furniture but can be challenging.

Antique boxes acted as portable storage workhorses for past generations. They served a variety of purposes from document boxes in which to keep valuable papers to writing boxes for correspondence to dressing boxes for grooming while traveling to tea caddies for storing precious tea. Victorians, in particular, loved boxes and people from all classes used them.

Unfortunately, people handled boxes a lot, so most antique ones aren’t in the greatest shape. Some boxes may have sat on a table in front of a window in the sunlight and became faded over time while others suffered from neglect.

A good example is an Indian sadeli mosaic-covered writing box that outlived its usefulness. Someone decided that instead of tossing it out, they would give it to their children to play with. The children drew all over the beautiful mosaic with crayons and someone did a bad job of pasting a piece of chartreuse felt over the writing surface on the inside. Needless to say, this restoration wasn’t a walk in the park.

Unlike antique furniture made before 1830, many antique boxes will benefit greatly with even modest restoration. And since they’re not large, it doesn’t take a lot of materials or time to restore them.

Antique boxes are valuable because they’re antique and looking old isn’t bad. And while restoring a box may make it look better, it may reduce its historical value. Boxes from the 18th century should only be restored by a professional restoration expert. In most cases, they need to be conserved, that is the deterioration of the box should be halted. Restoration is a more radical solution and often includes refinishing the wood and replacing metal parts. So the question to be asked is whether the box is in bad enough shape to render it less valuable than its being restored?












While restoration usually begins with reviving the wood of the box’s body, it also takes in exterior decorations made of ivory, tortoiseshell, and mother-of-pearl. These materials are all fragile and should be checked for cracks, abrasions, and chips. Metal ornamentation may be missing, dented or creased, or it may just need polishing. Veneers and inlay are much more difficult to repair and may require professional assistance.

Antique boxes also contain small and sometimes specialized hinges and locks that must also be examined for repair, restoration, or replacement. Finding replacements can be a real challenge since many of these may have been made for a particular box.

But minor conservation can do wonders for an antique box. First, tighten any loose screws and gently tap in any loose nails. Repair loose joints with wood glue. Finally, clean the box with a soft lint-free cloth dampened with Murphy’s Oil Soap solution. Do a small area at a time and use another lint-free cloth to dry it. After letting the box dry thoroughly for 24 hours, give it two coats of Minwax past wax to protect the exterior. Follow the directions on the can.




Dust the interior of the box with a soft shaving brush. If the wood is bare, as with some inner areas of the box, switch to a solvent-based cleaner. Use a toothbrush or toothpick to clean out any crevices. If this has markedly improved the box’s appearance then it may be a good time to stop.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit 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 the Victorians in the Winter 2018 Edition, "All Things Victorian," online now. 

Give Me Your Tired and Your Poor, Yearning to be Free

QUESTION: My mother collected Statue of Liberty memorabilia for a long time. She began when she was only a teenager with a little statue she bought on a class trip to New York. Seeing Lady Liberty up close inspired her to buy the statue. After that, she couldn’t get enough of her.  Her collection began with canceled stamps showing the Statue of Liberty which she tore off of envelopes. She added a postcard of the statue that a friend sent to her. Over the years, she amassed a collection of over 100 items, all depicting the Statue of Liberty.  My mother is gone now, but her collection lives on. I’d really like to know more about these collectibles and the Statue of Liberty, itself. Can you help me?

ANSWER: Statue of Liberty memorabilia is probably one of the more popular collecting categories. While some items are worth just a few dollars, others can reach four figures.

Although the French Government conceived the Statue of Liberty as a symbolic gesture, no one had any idea at the time just how important a symbol she would become. Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, her creator, envisioned her as a monument to the mutual love of the French and Americans for liberty, and as propaganda against the then conservative leaders of the French government. It was thought that building a huge monument for the United States would forever link that powerful democratic country, with France, and cement that country's new Third Republic. But not everyone shared Bartholdi's vision.

Fundraising, especially in the United States, proved difficult. The Statue of Liberty Committee had planned to unveil that the statue would be unveiled in 1876 for the Centennial of American Independence. But sluggish fundraising delayed the gift for at least 10 years. This resulted in a variety of wonderful memorabilia. Most souvenirs sold for pennies to dollars each to raise money to complete the big statue and bring her to America. The French, on the other hand,  raised money to complete the building of the statue piece by piece while the Americans raised  funds to complete the gigantic base. By 1884, The French had completed Miss Liberty an d were ready to ship her. But the American Committee was short the $100,000 needed to complete her pedestal. To raise additional monies, the Committee commissioned more than 100,000 models which it sold by subscription, and at Macy's and other department stores. Each $1 purchase added to the Liberty coffers. It sold some 12-inch models for $5. Today, the small metal models sell for $250 to $300 and the large ones from $500 to $1,000.

Meanwhile, the French disassembled the statue into over 300 pieces and shipped it in more than 200 wooden crates. The arm bearing the torch filled 21 boxes alone. On June 17, 1886, she arrived. Workers placed the statue on the immense supporting monument designed by Richard Morris Hunt. On Oct. 28, 1886, the Committee officially installed and dedicated the Statue of Liberty. There was a huge inaugural parade and President Grover Cleveland delivered a dedication address. Collectors covet the programs, tickets, and invitations from this gala occasion.
   
During the earliest Liberty years, many souvenirs appeared. During the 10 years before Liberty arrived, many publishers printed lithographs, including early pieces of sheet music. There are stereopticon photos from the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia of Liberty’s right arm, which appeared at the fair, showing visitors standing on her torch. These souvenirs now sell for $125. Visitors to the fair could purchase large, finely detailed bronze medals, crafted in Paris.
 

In 1878, Liberty had no body, but when Europeans gathered in Paris for the 1878 Expeditions, the head had been completed and was displayed on the banks of the Seine. Visitors filled her crown and for several francs, could take home a lovely 4-inch Liberty bust, a few of which found their way to America and today sell for upwards of $500. Other French souvenirs included tasseled, silks and ribbons made for the fair by B.B. Tilt & Son in Paterson, New Jersey.

For a substantial contribution to aid French fundraising, up to 100 zinc statuettes went on sale, including a small edition, finely detailed statuette in terra cotta, hand-finished by Bartholdi, himself. During the 1986 Liberty Centennial, several of these reached more than $100,000 at auction. In the United States, a New Jersey furniture maker named Follmer, cast a few detailed zinc statuettes carrying 1883 and 1885 patent dates. These are quite rare, much more so than the American Committee Models. Follmer's statuettes feature the original Hunt pedestal design that the Committee ultimately abandoned for the one actually under Liberty's feet. Today, these statues sell for over $5,000.

The 20th century witnessed many more souvenirs—some as works of art, some as advertising, some as satirical commentaries, some as cheap souvenirs for the hordes of tourists who visited her. Practically everything had the image of Miss Liberty reproduced on it, including clocks, lamps, statuettes, compacts, cigarette cases and boxes, cookie tins, pitchers, spoons, china and even trade cards satirizing Liberty in order to sell a product. Though some of objects were beautifully done, others appear cheap with muddied facial features and poor workmanship. But even the cheap ones are collectible.

During the Liberty Centennial in 1986, there was a rush of interest in Liberty collecting. At that time, there were thousands of souvenirs and "limited editions" sold, including watches, medals, limited-edition plates, rugs, cookie jars, mugs, and jewelry.

Most collectors agree that, although items are becoming more scarce, there are still plenty of them out there. Statue of Liberty items usually appear at flea markets. Since many aren’t that large, collectors often find them in glass cases with other small items.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit 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 the Victorians in the Winter 2018 Edition, "All Things Victorian," online now.