America's First Industry

Until 1830 Bulls-eye, or crown glass was how glass windows were made, along with another technique called the Hand-Cylinder method, in which globes of hot glass were elongated into cylinders by swinging into a deep trench, the slit lengthwise, flattened and cooled.

The glass makers held the prestige of being called  "gentlemen" unlike others who worked with their hands.  The wealthy were their customers, they held a monopoly, and claimed their craft was "aristocratic."  The glass maker could build their own glass plant, making it the first industry in colonial America.

Glass making in America was started by immigrants from Germany, Poland and Italy in the early 1600s.  Massachusetts Bay offered land to attract glass makers who could make bottles, lamps, tableware and small windows.  Glass beads for Indian trade were also a popular product.

Casper Wistar, German immigrant, started a glass plant which his son advertised in Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette in 1769 as "our own glass, of our own manufacture, more especially those upon which the duties (taxes) have been imposed solely to raise revenue." The slogan used was "BUY AMERICAN MANUFACTURED GOODS" at a time when the British goods were becoming very unpopular in colonial America.

In contrast, Henry William Stiegal (Baron von Stiegal due to his lavish lifestyle) used imported glass to make glassware, perfume bottles and other luxury items.  Stiegal had trouble marketing his luxury glass to a people who turned their noses up at Old World taste.  Stiegal went bankrupt, went to debtor's prison, and died in poverty.  However, if you have any Stiegal glassware today (photo right), you have something that is considered part of a precious collection...one that the American Revolution time period didn't .
appreciate.



Next time - Evolving: Sheet glass for the masses
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Today in Pioneer History: "On January 13, 1929, Wyatt Earp dies in Los Angeles, nearly 50 years after the gunfight at the OK Corral.  Earp was 80 years old.  After the famous shootout, Earp had wandered the West, operating gold mines, running saloons and raising horses.  His last saloon was in Nome, Alaska where he had joined the Alaskan Gold Rush until 1901.