Fruit Jar Rambles Extra By Tom Caniff — Photos by Deena Caniff
SOLID, MAN! A solid-pour Safety Lid is cool The April 2019 GLASS CHATTER, the newsletter of the Midwest Antique Fruit Jar & Bottle Club, included the top item in Photo 1, showing a previously unreported “solid-pour” made in a SAFETY fruit jar lid mould. The jar lid’s embossing, partially visible in the aqua glass solid-pour, reads PATENT APPLIED FOR. This little prize was acquired by Midwest club member Dave Rittenhouse. Full and partial solid-pour fruit jars have been reported for years. These solid-pour jars and partial jars were thought to be the result of filling the glass moulds with hot glass to heat them at the beginning of a run and were probably also the result of accidents with the automatic glass blowing machines. Most of these solid pieces would have been tossed back into the cullet bins, but some did survive, possibly taken to be used as paperweights or door stoppers. Solid-pour jars reported over the years came from moulds that include the -ATLAS- MASON’S PATENT, the BALL (3-L) MASON, the BALL PERFECT MASON, various MASON’S PATENT NOV. 30th 1858 examples, the MODEL MASON, the PREMIUM COFFEYVILLE, KAS., the SCHRAM AUTOMATIC SEALER, a WOODBURY WGW half-pint, and others. But there’s only been one other solid-pour lid reported, a green example made in a Hartell’s PATENTED OCTOBER 19, 1858 glass screw-cap mold. Photo 2 shows a solid-pour of the bottom couple inches of a Canadian CROWN jar. The Nelson Glass Co. was incorporated on Oct. 22, 1891, in Muncie, Ind., for
the purpose of “manufacturing and selling glass fruit jars, bottles, and any and all articles of things made of glass, iron or wood, or partly of any or all of them.” On Dec. 30, 1891, Irenaeus P. Nelson applied for a patent for his idea of a “Jar Sealing Device” for “fruit-jars and the like.” The idea, which was applied to the SAFETY jar (Photo 3), called for “inclined grooves” to be blown into the jar’s neck to receive the ends of the locking wire (Figure A). Nelson received patent 471,756, on May 10, 1892. Then, after five years, on Nov. 11, 1896, CHINA, GLASS AND LAMPS reported that “the idle flint bottle works” of the Nelson Glass Co. had been purchased for $20,000 by the Muncie Flint Glass Co. The Nelson Glass Co., it added, had “abandoned fruit jar mfg. 3 years ago ...” Figure B shows an ad from the DAYTON (Ohio) HERALD newspaper of Jan. 8, 1894, which offers pint, quart, and half-gallon “Safety Fruit Jars” in “White and Amber.” And while we’re on the subject, Photo 4 shows a heavy, 7 inch long, 3 inch wide, sun colored amethyst, solid-pour glass lid to a battleship covered dish, complete with four gun turrets and two smoke stacks! This was likely saved for use as a paperweight or even a doorstop. Its bottom shows fairly heavy wear. I don’t recognize the particular battleship. It’s not one of the several covered dish tops that I know of that were used by E.C. Flaccus, Flaccus Bros., Exley Watkins, and other mustard packers in the Wheeling, W.Va., area. Photo 5 shows one of the clear glass battleships for which George A. Flaccus, president of Wheeling’s Flaccus Bros Co., held the Oct. 4, 1898 design patent. This design-patented covered dish, in
PHOTO 1: Solid-pour (top) and regular SAFETY fruit jar lids.
PHOTO 2: Canadian CROWN jar solid-pour.
both clear and milkglass, was used by the company for its Prepared Mustard, and it could well be that the battleship covered dish, whose mould our solid-pour lid came from, held some other circa-1900 food packer’s mustard, jelly, or whatever. September 2020
17
