My wife Irene and I have been dealers of quality Victorian-era to Art Nouveau china, pottery, bronzes, paperweights and other decorative smalls since 1970.

From the beginning, we exhibited our wares at Southeastern New England antique shows. We gave up shows at the end of 1998, in favor of exhibiting at antique malls. After the antique mall scene became flooded with non-antiques (collectables) we decided to quit that venue and since then have been selling on eBay.

I'm a retired graphic designer from the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Newport, Rhode Island. Although I'm officially retired, I haven't quit working. This antiquing business, and researching and writing books on local Rhode Island history, and articles about antiques for the magazine Antiques & Collecting, is the "work" that I enjoy.

We hope that you will find something at our Bristol Art Exchange eBay store worthy of your curio cabinet. We stand behind all our offerings and aim to fairly represent all that we offer.

My name is Richard V. Simpson, if you Google my name, you will find all my books' titles.

---

Mount Washington to Pairpoint

Copyright 2006 by Richard V. Simpson

---

The Men and The Works

THE REASON FOR the demise of New England's glassmaking industry can be laid to the scarcity of cheap energy. After the abundance of available forests to feed the insatiable hunger of the wood-fired furnaces was depleted in the Northeast, the only source of fuel at hand was expensive coal shipped by sea.

During the post-Revolutionary War years there was a general westward migration of the eastern population lured by jobs in industries that sprung up spurred by easier access to ample raw materials and energy. As the glass houses left, so followed the cutting and decorating shops. Only five glass houses operated in Pittsburgh in 1813; by 1857, that number had risen to thirty-five. Today, the last of the stalwart sons of New England's glass industry continue to ply their ancient craft at Pairpoint's Sagamore works. As the last glass works in New England producing a full-lead crystal product, the Pairpoint Glass Company, of Sagamore, Massachusetts, carries on a proud tradition steeped in the customs of almost two centuries of American glass making. It is the legacy of a New England industry that began in Boston in 1818, when Deming Jarves founded the New England Glass Company on the ruins of the failed Boston Porcelain & Glass Company.

The names of the man who founded New England glass industry are so entwined with the furnaces that they built that it is hard to speak about one without mentioning- the other.

Deming Jarves and George D. Jarves
Until about the turn of the century the domestic glass industry was a modest one. It was hardly able to hold onto the meager thread of trade it had, because inexpensive imports were flooding the domestic market and undercutting the native product.

The name Deming Jarves will forever be enshrined as a pioneer in the American glass industry. Jarves was a successful Boston importer and entrepreneur who in 1818 with three associates, set out to change the direction of glass production in America.

The New England Glass Company, East Cambridge, Massachusetts, flourished under Jarves' leadership. Always alert, in 1825/6 he gave up control of the importing business to found the Boston and Sandwich Glass Company. The success of that glass works is well known. But Jarves, eager for new challenges, scanned the horizon. With two profitable glass houses to his credit, he established the Mount Washington Glass Works at South Boston in 1838, in 1839, he transferred the operation to his son, George D. Jarves.

For more than thirty years the senior Jarves directed his diversified business interests from his Boston office. An astute businessman, he once sold an unprofitable steamboat to his partners in the importing enterprise. The money received from the sale of the boat was used to start yet another glass house in 1858-the Cape Cod Glass Works.

The Mount Washing-ton Glass Works was registered under the name Jarves & Com(m)erais (Pairpoint Glass by Leonard E. Padgett uses one "m" in Comerais, in Fire and Sand by E. William Fairfield uses two), but it advertised under the Mount Washington logotype. With George D. Jarves as agent (manager), the Mount Washington Works operated successfully from 1839 until 1861, when it was closed temporarily.

William L. Libbey
In 1855 William L. Libbey with his wife and son, Edward Drummond Libbey, left his home in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to begin his new position as a clerk at Jarves & Comerais' importing entity.

William Libbey was later transferred to Jai-Jarves' Mount Washington Glass Works in South Boston to work as a bookkeeper; it was there that he learned the traditions of the glass making trade. This knowledge would serve him and his son Edward well. The Libbeys are the founders of another great American glass house that flourishes today-Libbey-Owens-Ford; but that's the stuff of another story.

In 1860, before Mount Washington closing, Libbey was made co-manager of the works along with Timothy Howe. Shortly after the closing in 1861, Libbey and Howe bought out the assets of the glass house. When Howe died in 1866, Libbey gained control of the company by buying Howe's share from his estate.

By 1869 the South Boston plant had become run down and generally dilapidated. So Libbey, ever alert, purchased the facilities of the New Bedford Glass Company which had fallen upon hard financial times. It was then that the New Bedford-Mount Washington love affair began; when William L. Libbey brought his Mount Washington Glass Works to New Bedford he lit fires that were not to be extinguished until 1957.

The New Bedford Factory
The factory buildings of the New Bedford Glass Co. that Libbey occupied on Prospect Street made up one of the most complete facilities of its kind in the country at that time. Built in 18661867, the buildings were spacious and modern. The three-story main building housed a ten-pot furnace, annealing ovens, model and mold shops, machine and cutting shops, and ample room for storage and shipping, as well as offices. There were several other spacious buildings in the complex from one to three stories; they contained a cooperage, decorating shops, clay and potting rooms, a blacksmith shop and a power plant. The property also included broad water frontage with docking facilities from which supplies were received and goods were shipped.

At New Bedford the firm was incorporated as W. L. Libbey & Co., but the product continued to be marketed under the name of Mount Washington Glass Works.

Libbey's success with the Mount Washington operation came to the attention of the owners of the New England Glass Co., and they offered him the position of general manager of that firm. So, he sold his interest in the New Bedford-based operation in 1872 and moved his family back to East Cambridge, Massachusetts.

After Libbey left New Bedford, management of Mount Washington was turned over to Captain Henry Libbey, an investor. During, the depression of 1873, the business failed, So in 1874 Captain Libbey resigned and the business closed.

Frederick S. Shirley
Later in the same year the glass works reopened with Frederick S. Shirley, a master glassmaker, as manager and H. Seabur as president. In 1876 the works was again reorganized and became known as the Mount Washington Glass Company.

In 1880 the owners of the Mount Washington Glass Company built a small Britannia works adjacent to the glass house. The owners then began a national search for a suitable manager for the plating works.

Thomas J. Pairpoint
Pairpoint was a nationalized American of English origin who had settled in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1867, the Gorham Silver Company hired him as a as a designer. In 1877 Pairpoint left Gorham for the Meriden Britannia Company at Meriden, Connecticut. During his years at Providence and Meriden, Pairpoint won many prizes for his designs, and he was considered by his peers to be one of the foremost designers of silverplate and silverware in the country.

As an inducement to Pairpoint to leave Meriden and take on the job of superintendent of Mount Washington's subsidiary Britannia works, the establishment was named The Pairpoint Manufacturing Company. Ultimately, the company became the largest and most diversified manufacturer of silverplated items in the country.

Pairpoint remained at New Bedford until April Fool's Day, 1885; he was succeeded by Thomas A. Tripp. Under Pairpoint and Tripp the company successfully competed in the national market producing all sorts of useful and ornamental housewares.

The Pairpoint Corporation
Because the neighboring firms had mostly the same stockholders and customers, the two businesses merged in 1894. The Mount Washington name continued in use until the turn of the century. Another reorganization came about in 1900. This time, the two firms became known as the Pairpoint Corporation. This name continued in use until 1938.

During the depression of 1929 the Pairpoint Corporation fell upon hard economic times and it never fully recovered. A salvage company bought the works in 1938, but it continued to produce at a modest level with a crew of about twenty.

Gundersen Glass Works, Inc. and
Gundersen-Pairpoint Glass Works
The Kenner Salvage Company sold the glass works to Isaac N. Babbitt in 1939, and once again Pairpoint was reorganized as the Gundersen Glass Works, Inc. Robert M. Gundersen was a master glass blower at the old Pairpoint Corporation, and under his guidance the new company began to grow by attracting new retail customers.

Edwin V. Babbitt was President of the National Pairpoint Company diversified operation manufacturing a variety of toys, aluminum windows, chemicals, ordinance, and glass. Babbitt purchased the glassworks after Gundersen died in 1952 and renamed it the Gundersen-Pairpoint Glass Works, and he became its director. Gundersen-Pairpoint began to feature as its main line of production the earlier widely acclaimed Pairpoint designs made in full lead crystal, both plain and engraved.

Robert Bryden
By 1957 the old plant and well-used equipment had become wrought with problems so much so that the only practical course was to close the factory. Thus, the glass making industry that had thrived for almost 100 years in New Bedford banked its fires and closed its doors. However, prior to Gundersen-Pairpoint's closure, Robert Bryden joined the glass works in 1950. Unbeknownst to Bryden he was beginning a career that would span thirty-eight years.

Bryden, a Boston University graduate, was a chemist working for United States Steel. One day, out of curiosity, he toured the Gundersen-Pairpoint factory, and he became so intrigued by the glass making process that be sought employment with the firm as a trainee. After little more than two years he was promoted to the position of sales manager.

After the plant closed in 1957, Bryden was responsible for overseeing the operation's move to East Wareham, Massachusetts, where a crew of eight of the old glassmen worked at the reorganized Pairpoint Glass Company from October 1957 until this plant, too, was forced to close in February 1958.

Pairpoint in Spain
In order to honor outstanding orders not filled before the closing of the New Bedford and East Wareham operations, Bryden leased facilities in Spain. Here he remained as manager and chemist of the Pairpoint Glass Company.

In 1968, Bryden, with a crew of skilled glassmakers he had recruited in Scotland, returned to Massachusetts. and, in 1970, he began production in a new factory with a two-pot furnace in Sagamore, Massachusetts, on the banks of the Cape Cod Canal.

In his seventies, after almost four decades in the glassmaking business and feeling the effects of lead poisoning, Bryden made his decision to retire. The Pairpoint Glass Company was sold to Robert Bancroft in late 1988, and it continues production of full lead crystal glass to this day.

The Product
THROUGHOUT THE almost two centuries of glassmaking in New England, the range of products produced by the various glass houses is astoundingo much so that, in fact, it gives the collector an enormous selection from which to satisfy his collecting interests. Examples include pieces freehand blown, pressed, or molded in a spectrum of colors or clear; utilitarian, decorative or whimsical; plain or fancy-unembellished and enameled, engraved, etched and cut; from the humble cup plate, drawer pull or salt dip; to the common vase, compote or finger bowl, to the rare flask, lamp shade or punch bowl.

During the early nineteenth century, production was more concentrated on the utilitarian than strictly decorative or whimsical. Lighting fixturesil lamps and later gas light shades-were turned out by the thousands both plain and fancy. Table ware-plates, serving pieces and drinking vessels-made of glass was as widely used then as china is today. The variety of collecting possibilities is innumerable.

The Mount Washington Glass Company produced a full range of glass objects: blown, pressed, molded and cut, in all imaginable forms and varieties. Beginning in the 1800s until its present incarnation as the Pairpoint Glass Company at Sagamore, Massachusetts, the works has been known primarily for its beautifully colored art glass.

As the middle class became more affluent during the last two decades of the 1800s, leading glass houses vied for their patronage. It was at this time that the parti-colored glasses were introduced: Amberina, Peachblow and Burmese.

Parti-colored Glass
Parti-colored ruby glass had been made for centuries in Europe. A remarkable transformation occurs when glass is reheated at the "glory hole. If done correctly, the entire vessel takes on a brilliant gold-ruby color. But more often the piece will fail to develop its color uniformly because of difficulty in controlling the temperature of the wood- or coal-fired furnaces.

A reality about making parti-colored glass must have occurred to nineteenth-century glassmakers. Because full-colored ruby glass was difficult to make and often failed to "strike" pure, causing a "failure" that had to be scrapped, it would thus be more profitable to try to control the failure and market it as a special product line. The New England Glass Company was producing articles in full ruby color as early as 1848-1849. It was this ruby glass, that was so difficult to control, that was the basis for Amberina (a name that was coined by Edmund Drumond Libbey) that was made in 1883. The product was so successful that it saved the company from financial ruin. Because of Amberina's commercial success, Hobbs, Brockunier and Company, of Wheeling, West Virginia, and Mount Washington quickly developed their own versions of the NEGC product in order to cash in on its popularity. Hobbs, Brockunier came up with Ruby Amber, and Mount Washington called its variation Rose Amber.

---

THE LEGACY OF PAIRPOINT GLASS

Copyright 2002 by Richard V. Simpson

---

After the Great Panic of 1873, the glass manufacturers of New England faced increasing troublesome financial and labor problems. By 1880, only seven glass houses still operated, and only three of those survived into the twentieth century.

The New England Glass Company of Cambridge, Massachusetts changed its name to W.L. Libbey & Son Co., and moved to Toledo, Ohio in 1888. Libbey still operates in Toledo as a division of Libbey-Owens-Ford Company. The Union Glass Company of Somerville, Massachusetts continued production until 1924. Finally, from the turn of the twentieth century, and into the first decade of the twenty-first century, all that remains of the once flourishing New England glass industry is the descendent of the Mount Washington Glass Works: Pairpoint.

Mount Washington Taps a New Market

Beginning around 1890, the Victorian taste for elaborate decoration brought to New Bedford manufacturer of traditional flint glass products, the Mount Washington Glass Works, a new type of glass; glass blanks that looked like vitreous china suitable for hand-applied enamel decoration. Mount Washington maintained its own very active decorating shop that was established in 1871 by Alfred E. and Harry A. Smith the Smith brothers.

Mount Washington supplied opal glass blanks that looked like china to amateur decorators and professional independent decorating shops. Among today best remembered glass decorating shops that used Mount Washington opal glass blanks are: Smith Brothers of New Bedford and the C.F. Monroe Company of Meridian, Connecticut.

Another important Mount Washington customer was right next door to its workshe Pairpoint Manufacturing Company. Pairpoint, mounted Mount Washington fancy goods in its elaborate Victorian electroplated silver mountings.

The eventual merger in 1894 of the Mount Washington Glass Company with the Pairpoint Manufacturing Company seemed a natural marriage. The two companies worked together, their customers were very similar, and their stockholders were virtually the same. In a 1895 catalogue, the name of the operation reads, ount Washington Glass Company - Consolidated with, Controlled and Operated By Pairpoint Manufacturing Company In 1900, the Pairpoint Manufacturing Company was re-organized as the Pairpoint Corporation.

Some Pairpoint Products

Handpainted China: Later (c.1905), in addition to using its self-produced opal glass for hand decorating, Pairpoint started decorating imported French porcelain made in strict accordance to its designs and specifications. This decorated china is identified by the word Pairpoint spelled out over a crown and the word Limoges under the crown. This Pairpoint-Limoges trade mark is printed in blue or green. A more rare china decoration mark is Pairpoint-Minton.

The Ball Connector: Beginning about 1910, and continuing through Pairpoint entire history, much of its production of vases, compotes, candle sticks, and other footed articles included a design element that became (in the eyes of collectors) a company trademar the bubble ball. Although collectors consider the distinctive connector a Pairpoint trademark, the company never advertised it as such. However, a photo caption in an early catalogue reads, ..the bubble ball makes a striking addition to the piece of glass.The patented spherical knop containing a series of controlled air traps running on a diagonal plane was used as a connecting device between the article and its foot. The bubble ball device, either round or elongated to a steeple shape, was also used as a finial on box and compote covers.

The collector is cautioned to remember that the bubble ball was not exclusively used by Pairpoint. Other American glass works using this device included Libbey of Toledo, Steuben of Corning, Old Morgantown Glass Co., in West Virginia, and Union Glass of Somerville, Massachusetts.

It is the Union Glass product that is most often confused with Pairpoint; not just because of the bubble ball, but also because some article shapes and colors are so similar to Pairpoint. The astute collector will notice that the bubbles in Union Glass bubble balls are parallel in concentric circles, while the Pairpoint bubbles run non-perpendicular.

Other ball-type connectors used at Pairpoint were: a solid colored ball, and a hollow blown colored glass ball. Usually, the solid colored ball connector matched the color of the glass applied as decoration to an article made of clear glass. When a clear hollow ball connector was used it was sometimes engraved with the same pattern as the rest of the article. Leonard E. Padgett in his book Pairpoint Glass (Wallace-Homestead, 1979), says about hollow engraved bubble balls, consider these pieces extremely rare and very desirable.p> The swirled-ball connector, seemingly a Pairpoint Corporation development appears in their catalogues. Later, during the Gundersen years the swirl connector was put to greater use; it is seen mostly on the glasswork popular ruby glassware.

Pairpoint Colored Crystals: Beginning about 1920, Pairpoint made many cut and engraved patterns on high quality colorless lead crystal articles. At the same time, and continuing through the more recent Bryden and Bancroft years, many of the colorless glass shapes produced, were also made in several transparent colors. Some colors developed and used exclusively by Pairpoint include: gold and selenium rubies; a medium-deep blue, called Pairpoint Marina Blue; Rosaria, a cranberry-color; Auroria, a reddish-amber; Canaria, a Greenish-yellow and of course, Pairpoint own recipes for cobalt blue, amethyst, green and a host of other original and traditional glass colors (see list at conclusion of this article).

The Pairpoint Glass Works often applied colored glass to articles executed in clear. For instance: an Auroria or amethyst gather added to the edge of the bowl and foot of an object.

The colors and shapes of every Pairpoint item, particularly vases, are a delight to the eye. To the credit of Pairpoint designers and gaffers, all the glass workshandblown products are wonderfully proportioned. Dimensions of illustrated pieces are included in the photo captions so the reader may judge for himself.

Cut and Engraved: Along with the many wares rendered in the genre of contemporary taste and style, Pairpoint Corporation designers took their inspiration from numerous sourcesncluding antiquity. An engraved Egyptian motif called Osiris, was undoubtedly a result of the discovery in the early 1920s of the tomb of King Tutankhamen. Pairpoint glass designers also drew heavily upon Stiegel, and Venetian glass for stimulus.

The periods of American cut glass are usually referred to as: Early, 1771-1830; Middle, 1830-1880; and Brilliant, 1880-1905. In the first book published on the subject, The Pairpoint Glass Story (Reynolds-DeWalt Printing, 1968), author George C. Avila suggests, ..we have to add two other periods: Pairpoint, 1905-1939, and Gundersen [Pairpoint], 1940-1956, who continued to manufacture fine engraved ware.

Avila lists 138 engraved patterns, as well as several so-called ransitionalpatterns, from brilliant to fine engraved. Avila also lists thirty-three diverse brilliant patterns.

A distinctive decorative treatment occasionally incorporates the use of bright (polished) geometric cut and matte (unpolished) engraved patterns on the same surface. This two-tone cut and engraved technique is especially striking, it can be found on significant clear crystal, and on important colored articles. A vessel with these mixed styles is particularly impressive when executed in the darker transparent colors of cobalt and amethyst.

Most collectors agree that Pairpoint engraved work is equal to the finest produced by the most respected of American and European glass cutting shops. Talented engravers employed by Pairpoint such as Otto Carl Banks, Anthony DeCosta and a few others are remembered as individual artists, rather than faceless drones in front of a spinning wooden wheel. During New Bedford high point as New England glass making center, it was said, if a cutter or engraver was trained at Mount Washington-Pairpoint, he could work anywhere in the world.

Surviving in the Twentieth Century

Almost immediately, the Pairpoint Corporation became a leader in the American glass industry. Operating with the finest modern equipment, skilled craftspeople and a dedicated staff of blue- and white-collar managers, the company met the most demanding needs of the marketplace. The new entity continued the Mount Washington tradition of fine colored glass and sparkling clear lead crystal until 1957. From 1939 to 1952, it operated as the Gundersen Glass Works, and from 1952 to 1957, as the Gundersen-Pairpoint Glass Works.

During years of peak production, there were many individual production shops within the Pairpoint plant. When economics dictated as production needs rose and fell, these shops were expanded, reduced, created or closed as required. Because many employees could work well in more than one trade, they moved from shop to shop as demand for particular products or skills dictated. This flexibility made it possible to produce a great variety of products economically and ensured study employment.

At Pairpoint, as a concession to the customer, all articles were available in all the Pairpoint colors, and in mixed variations. For example, a cornucopia vase could be in clear glass, engraved with the Cornwall Pattern, or any other design, or left undecorated. Additionally, the same vessel could be in any of Pairpoint colors including Rose Amber (Amberina) and Burmese. A customer could order from an open stock of standard shapes and decorations, specifying the desired color.

After the New Bedford operation closed, manager and chemist Robert Bryden with a crew of seven, moved the plant to East Wareham, Massachusetts in October 1957. Bryden brought Ciro erryAngelini to East Wareham as gaffer, assisted by William Frates and Joao ohnAmaral, both New Bedford glassblowers. Bryden considered Angelini, with forty-five years of experience, one of the ten top glassblowers in the United States.

The reorganized Pairpoint Glass Company continued to fill outstanding orders at its new location. Cutting and engraving continued at the old plant with John Souza, Manuel Amaral and two others, until the move to the new plant could be compleated. Sadly, in February 1958, the new operation closed down before the move was made. So, all cutting and engraving on the East Wareham product was done at the old Pairpoint factory in New Bedford.

Bryden then leased facilities in Spain, where for about ten years he continued limited production for his faithful American customers.

In 1968, Bryden returned to Massachusetts and, in 1970, made the first batch of glass in a new factory in the town of Sagamore, on the banks of the Cape Cod Canal. With a skilled crew of glassblowers hired away from the Scottish firm of Edinburgh & Leith Flint Glass, the future of the newly incorporated Pairpoint Glass Company was assured.

Cut and engraved glass remained an important part of the Sagamore operation. Bryden enticed master glass cutter Sexton arlSchweidenback to the new plant. Carl was one of the old-time Pairpoint cutters who learned his craft in the early New Bedford days. His name shows up on a January 11, 1932, Pairpoint cutting and engraving department payroll register as earning 63 cents per hour. Quickly, Carl took as an apprentice, a talented local lad, Edward dPoore.

After almost three decades, and feeling the effects of lead poisoning, Bryden sold the Pairpoint Glass Company to Robert Bancroft in 1988. Robert Bryden died at his Frogmore, South Carolina home in 1996.

Continuing a New England tradition that began in 1837, Bancroft Pairpoint Crystal Co., operates today in Sagamore, in an enlarged facility on the site of Bryden 1970 plant.

Robert Bryden
Last Batch of Burmese and Peachblow

What is the mystery and romance that surrounds this Pairpoint product? Simply, it is that the formula used by Pairpoint is the original Mount Washington Glass Co. formula developed by Frederick S. Shirley in 1885.

During two eventful weeks in February 1988, when Bryden gaffers began plying their magic with that last batch of homogenous alchemy, vessels and whimsies materialized to take their place on collector shelves. The shapes available for a very limited time in the factory store included candlesticks, Jack vases, and Trumpet vases, all about eight inches tall. Also a jar and a cruet with an curve handle, both of these item without stoppers; the jar is about six inches tall and the cruet about seven inches. Miniatures included hat-shaped toothpick holders, sugar bowls and creamers, and some creamers with reeded handles (others plain); these vessels were diamond quilted, or ribbed, others plain. Among the whimsies were tiny hats, pears, penguins, pigs and fish Some of the larger pieces were enamel decorated with tiny butterflies and floral motifs. All the decorated pieces are signed with the company Diamond P Pairpoint logo incorporated in the design. All other first-quality pieces receive the company logo in a circular sticker with the Sagamore address and/or an acid etched Diamond P on the base of the object. Additionally, a decorated tri-corn vase was made in limited numbers exclusively for the Old Dartmouth Historical Society Museum.

Also available at the factory store during those same few weeks in February were items blown from another favorite color: Peachblow. In addition to the above shapes, included in the Peachblow color was a regular-size sugar and creamer. The creamer is heart shaped and footed; the sugar is round and footed. The size and shape of the sugar bowl is ideally suited for use as an individual nut bowl or small candy dish. When the batch of Peachblow was all used up, Bryden mixed the chemistry for a color which had not been made in forty years: the exotic Camelia, which has the coloring of luscious crushed raspberries.

The romance of Mount Washington original designs and colors has been renewed though the hands of Pairpoint late twentieth-century gaffers. These skilled craftsmen have succeeded in making graceful, thin-walled vessels, and they have expertly controlled the reheating process, which accounts for the delicate shading of these three parti-colored art glasses. It is the pure gold in the formula which, imparts to each color the blush of pink, purple or raspberry.

Less then ten years after their introduction, a secondary market has already developed for this last edition of Burmese, Peachblow and Camelia, and prices are on the rise. One may be assured that values of the older glasses will move in relation to the new.

Summary