South Jersey Glass

South Jersey glass, glass made at American factories in southern New Jersey, New England, and New York state from about 1781 to about 1870, following the example of Caspar Wistar. Though Wistar’s factory had closed in 1780, it had provided the impetus for the “South Jersey tradition.” The workmen were descendants of Wistar’s own German and Polish workers or new immigrants from Europe, and their style had its roots in the glass made for centuries in central Europe. Tableware, such as jugs and sugar bowls, was made in bottle and window glass, these latter being the staple products of most factories. The use of this glass dictated the range of natural colours: green and amber for bottle glass and aquamarine for window glass, though other colours were sometimes added. Decoration was of a kind long established in European glass: applied blobs of glass, variously fashioned, and “threads” of molten glass drawn around and around the vessel. Another technique, with no European ancestry and peculiar to South Jersey, was the “lily pad” ornament, in which an extra coating of molten glass was given to the bottom of the vessel and worked with a tool into a series of points up its sides, giving an effect that was at once artless and controlled. The best period of South Jersey was between 1820 and 1850; after that, the increasing mechanization of the American glass industry and other factors caused a decline in individual glassblowing.