Fall 2017 Glass Miscellany

Pitkin Glass Works ruins, October 2017.

It hasn't been the best fall foliage season here in Connecticut. A Gypsy Moth outbreak and a severe thunderstorm with hail caused trouble for the trees in a lot of places back in June, and autumn 2017 has so far alternated between too dry and warm, and a couple of periods of wind and rain that have tended to knock a lot of leaves to the ground. Still, there are scenic views here and there, including the Pitkin Glass Works ruins in Manchester.

New sign for the ruins site.

The Pitkin site has a new sign, featuring a Pitkin-type flask. The old sign had a painting of a free blown demijohn sort of bottle.

The old Center Turnpike crosses a wooden bridge in Boston Hollow, heading west into Westford.

The location of the Westford Glass Company is the most isolated of the early glass works sites in Connecticut. A moderately busy state road, Rt. 89, passes by the factory site, but Westford is a quaint and thinly populated village, and it's right on the edge of Boston Hollow and the Yale-Myers forest, an expansive undeveloped tract that is probably about as close as the Nutmeg State gets to a wilderness area.

The disused but preserved church in the center of Westford, a few hundred yards from the foundations of the Westford Glass Co.

The October 2017 Heckler & Co. live auction.

We're entering a busy couple of weeks for specialist bottle auctions, with several online sales going on now or starting soon. Here in Connecticut, Norman C. Heckler & Co. just had one of their live auctions, where there was some good local antique glass up for bidding, including an amber Willington blueberry preserve bottle and a large, light yellow olive chestnut bottle (both at upper left in the auction floor photo). The blueberry bottle went for something approaching a retail price, but the chestnut was a bargain.

PATENT insulator, Willington Glass Co.

In November, Heckler's is having an online sale. One interesting Connecticut piece is an insulator embossed PATENT (with the letters reversed). There are two or three variants of this item, all thought to be made in Willington, with reports of shards being found at the glass factory site and also along railroad tracks in the area. Apparently, insulator collectors don't necessarily think that these were insulators, and there is some speculation that they were some kind of decorative architectural accent (whether or not a big pyramidal chunk of dark muddy olive glass with "PATENT" written backwards all over it in block letters is "decorative," is, I suppose, a matter of taste).

GI-33 WASHINGTON / JACKSON pint historical flask, Coventry Glass Works (left) with three GI-32 New England Washington flasks.

The sale preview also offered a chance to examine a somewhat confusing group of flasks, the GI-31, 32 and 33 Washington/Jackson pints. These are quite similar to each other, and I've seen well-known specialists mix them up. Of interest to the staff here at Quiet Corner Glass is the GI-33, which was the Coventry Glass Works version of this type of Washington flask. The easiest field mark of the 33 is that the lettering is noticeably smaller than with the other two molds, with the W in "Washington" being placed opposite G.W.'s receding hairline. In the 31 and 32 flasks, the W is down at eye level. GI-31 is probably a Keene-Marlboro St. (NH) flask, whereas GI-32 is of uncertain New England origin.

Heckler Auction 138

Connecticut eagle flasks: GII-62 and GII-71

Norman C. Heckler & Co.'s July online auction, number 138, was set up for an early preview this past weekend, during their June live auction. I don't know if it was planned that way or not, but the offerings include specimens of many of the Bald Eagle themed flasks from northeastern Connecticut, just in time for Independence Day. The Coventry Glass Works eagle/eagle half-pint is a nice example, with lighter, greener glass and a cleaner impression than most.

Willington Glass Co. quart eagle flask, GII-61.

Willington Glass Co. eagle half-pint (GII-63) and pint (GII-62), with free blown handled jug.

Ther auction will have just about a complete set of the Willington Glass Co. eagle flasks (I'm not sure if both of the GII-63 variants were represented), which would also be a complete set of all the figured flasks that are thought to have been manufactured in Willington. The large quart Willi. eagle has a cooling crack in the neck (of the bottle, not the eagle); those sorts of manufacturing defects seem to be pretty common with this mold. 

"BY A A COOLEY HARTFORD CON"

The A.A. Cooley boot-blacking bottle is thought to be a Coventry Glass Works product. These turn up for sale on a fairly regular basis, but the embossing of the letters on this bottle is especially strong.

Pint sunburst flask, probably Pitkin Glass Works GVIII-5a.

There will be a very nice Connecticut sunburst flask in the sale, which I believe is GVIII-5a. This is a quite a rare bottle, but unfortunately this example has a chunk knocked out of the shoulder, somewhat crudely filled in with epoxy.

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Edit to add: Heckler's listed the sunburst flask as a GVIII-7 variant, and it does have two faint dots near the shoulders on the face opposite the one in the photo. It's definitely not a proper GVIII-7, though, with the circle in the center of the sunburst only present on one side, and with fairly angular shoulders that give the whole bottle an outline that's pretty close to the Coventry GVIII-3. Norm Heckler Sr. says that he didn't quite know what to make of this bottle, which probably doesn't happen very often.  

Westford Bottles Auctioned

Norman C. Heckler & Co.

Norman C. Heckler & Company, in Woodstock, Connecticut, is the specialist auction house most closely associated with glass from the Quiet Corner, because of geography and the expertise of the company's founder. This summer, Heckler's is liquidating the collection of Ralph Fletcher, a specialist in the Westford Glass Company and also owner of the property that includes the site of the glass works in Westford (a village in Ashford, Ct). There are a bunch of Westford pieces being offered in the current online Heckler's auction, and more coming up in future sales. Here are a few highlights.

GXIII-37 half pint sheaf-of-wheat / "Westford Glass Co Westford Conn" flask. A common flask, but almost unheard of with a sheared lip rather than a tooled applied collar.

Demijohn blown in a three piece mold with a beveled base, a form associated with the Westford Glass Co. The colors of glass produced at Westford are overwhelmingly dominated by amber, so this blue-green example is unusual, possibly suggesting that this particular bottle was made at the Willington Glass Co., which made a broader range of colors (in addition to also making a whole lot of murky dark amber glass).

Free blown flask with sheared lip and sheared or pontiled base. Made of very heavy, dark olive amber glass and attributed to Westford by Fletcher.

"Geo. W. Hoxsie's Premium Beer" bottles are generally thought to have been manufactured at Westford. 

More dark amber beer bottles, cylinder whiskey bottles and demijohns in styles and colors that are linked to Westford. These less valuable bottles are to be sold at Heckler's August live auction. 

A case of unembossed Hoxsie-style beer bottles, also maybe of Westford origin and destined for the August live auction.