In the past few years, The Corning Museum of Glass has received a number of pieces of pressed Pattern glass as gifts from three different collectors. Included were pieces of "Actress" glass, and two large collections of historical glass and of bread plates. Cataloguing these pieces led me to reading trade journals, comparing published sources, and searching files which the Rakow Library acquired several years ago, and I have found some attributions, positive and tentative, which may be of interest to American glass collectors. The files are those of J. Stanley Brothers, an American glass enthusiast who combed trade papers and patent office files during the 1930s and 1940s and, fortunately for us, left his finds neatly arranged by company name, so that when we acquired most of them his widow, they were easy to use.
A good many of our newly acquired pieces were made by Adams & Company, a Pittsburgh glasshouse manufacturing mostly lamps and pressed glass in the latter part of the nineteenth century. A number of patterns have previously been attributed to Adams on the basis of catalogs used by Ruth Webb Lee, Minnie Watson Kamm and William Heacock. These seem to be at least two different catalogs and possibly three. Those used by Lee and Kamm were undated but probably printed in 1888 or 1889, since both authors include "Palace", which was introduced in 1888, but not "XLCR", which was introduced in December, 1890, according to Kamm1, Lee discussed an Adams catalog in Antiques in 19332 and illustrated thirteen patterns from it; she showed the cover of a catalog in Victorian Glass and added the names of three more patterns. Mrs. Kamm gives two slightly different lists of the patterns in her catalog,3 and mentions other Adams pieces in passing. The catalog published by Heacock was one issued at the time of the merger into the United States Glass Company in 18914. Not surprisingly, all of these catalogs contain many of the same patterns. Lee knew that her catalog was from the 1880s, but she relied on the the word of an elderly glassworker to state that "No. 140-Wildflower" had been in production since the 1870s; and Kamm took off from that to date the catalog she used as printed in 1874. In fact, "Wildflower" was probably a pattern of 1884 or 1885.
The principals of Adams & Company were John Adams, his sons, Adolphus A. and William, and James Dalzell, who was factory superintendent at least from Feb. 5, 1880, when he is mentioned in the American Pottery and Glassware Reporter in that capacity, until he resigned and sold his interest back to the Adams family in September, 18835.
Samuel G. Vogeley was factory foreman throughout the1880s. He is mentioned as factory foreman in a July 2, 1880. article in the same tradepaper. Vogeley and Adolphus A. Adams were granted a patent for hollow-stem objects with enclosed ornamentation on July 25, 1882, and the company apparently used this patent with several different patterns, as will be seen below. Patents in 1876 and 1879 were granted to Augustus A. Adams, but it is not clear if these are two different people, typographical errors, or perhaps two different ways of writing Adolphus Augustus Adams's name! The latter seems most likely to me, as the tradepaper notices all use "Adolphus A." (Fig. 1).
Fig. 1. Illustration for patent issued to Adolphus A. Adams, March 3, 1875.
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1Minnie Watson Kamm, 200 Pattern Glass Pitchers, Book 6, P. 93.
2Ruth Webb Lee, "Pittsburgh Versus Sandwich", Antiques, Aug., 1933, pp. 65-67
3Kamm, Bk. 3, P. 34 and Bk. 6, p.93.
4William Heacock and Fred Bickenhauser, Encyclopedia of Victorian Colored Pattern Glass, U.S. Glass from A to Z, 1978.
5AP&GR, Sept. 10, 1883.