IAN SIMMONDS

American Mold Blown Tableware 1815-40: A New Look at an American Classic Ian Simmonds Morse Institute Library, 14 E. Central St., Natick, MA. Talk starts at about 1:30pm.

American mold blown tableware of the early 19th Century, one of the longest established and most highly revered collectible categories of early American glass, is in need of a new round of scholarship.

The glass long known to collectors as Blown Three Mold started out as a relatively inexpensive way for creating highly decorative glass from a lead glass manufacturer's second quality of glass, yet it fascinated—and commanded high prices from—wealthy American collectors of the 1920s and 30s.

I will illustrate the technology of making this glass with pictures of a glass blower making several different pieces using a single three part, hinged mold. This will demonstrate the skill involved in making tableware in this way, which exceeded that of making machine pressed glass, or in making bottles using apparently similar hinged molds.

Next I will place mold blown tableware in its historical context, as highly decorative mid-market tableware made from second-quality glass. The manufacturer's need to find some use for their inevitable second-quality of glass corresponded well with the mid-range customer's desire for cheap yet fashionable tableware.

Following this introduction, I will tackle the somewhat thorny subject of figuring out who made this glass, when, and where. After briefly describing how Helen McKearin brought order to Blown Three Mold with her classification scheme, I will present new research that suggests both a partial chronology for Blown Three Mold and a grouping of certain molds that must have been made and used together.

I will conclude by mapping some of the factories that made this glass, both in America and in Europe, as well as documentation and a number of archeological finds that show just how widely it was used in America in the first half of the 19th Century.

My talk is being hosted by the Founders' Chapter of the National American Glass Club.