09/01/2024
More info on America’s earliest known blown glass drinking vessel :
Benjamin Franklin addressed The Wistar Glass Works as “ Our Glass Works ! 1n 1977 a smaller size identical mug was discovered in the bottom of a privy inside of Benjamin Franklin Court on Market Street , Philadelphia. The dig was led by senior archaeologist Barbara Ligett who dated the mug c. 1750 . The shards of another identical mug were unearthed at the Wistar site and another nearly intact threaded mug was dug on Tindal Island at the mouth of Alloway creek , this tidal water from the Delaware bay was at the mouth of the Alloway ‘s creek which one could navigate up stream to the back of the Wistar Glass Works.
This blown glass mug is undoubtedly the earliest known drinking vessel made in America. There is also overwhelming proof, both archaeological and scientific, that this iconic Colonial mug was made at Americas first successful Glass works , Wistarburgh .
The dark olive threaded bowl has no equal , it is the only colonial green glass bowl with applied full body decoration using applied horizontal threading . The foot also exhibits applied trailing or threading. The threads on the bowl are somewhat fused in the glass from excessive heat returning to the glory hole, the shard of the threaded mug pictured here , found at the Wistar site , also exhibits fused threading identical to the bowl but is in-fact part of an excavated mug. This proves that when this broken mug was intact the threading looked more like the bowl than large intact Wistar mug pictured here.
One dot leads to another and all of this information at the end will clarify the mystery of Wistarburg glass . Not one piece of blown glass was seriously attributable to The Wistar operation for near 80 years or more, however in thr late teens and 1920’s everything was called Wistarburgh.
