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Adams & Company, A Closer Look,
by Jane Shadel Spillman, From: The Glass Club
Bulletin 1990/91
---------------------------------------------------------------
 Fig.
21. Assortment No. 170, Bread Plates in "Dahlia" and"Flower Pot" patterns and the "Railroad" Tray. Bryce, Higbee & Company,
Cooperative Class Company or Canton Glass Company, Spelman Brothers catalog, c.
1885. pieces, the "Panel and Rib" candy dish and a 5" comport in the pattern called "Ida" by Kamm and attributed by her to Bryce, Higbee & Company, as she found it in their catalog.22 That should mean that all of these patterns were made by Bryce, Higbee & Company in the 1880s rather than by Canton or Bryce Brothers. To my mind, the most mysterious of these Spelman Brothers assortments is No. 170, which shows the "Dahlia" bread plate, called "Floral", the "Flower Pot" bread tray and the "Railroad" tray (Fig. 21). The latter is the only one of these patterns which was patented. The design was registered by Joseph K. Brown on July 4, 1882. Mr. Brown was living in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania at the time. Like many glassmen, he moved around quite a bit. He signed design patent #7,758 as a witness on September 15, 1874, when he was living in Pittsburgh and presumably employed there. From 1878 until mid-1882, he was associated with the Cooperative Flint Glass Company in Beaver Falls, for most of that time as Secretary-Treasurer. In late 1882, he joined the Canton Glass Company, which was then being formed, and stayed there until 1890, when he apparently joined the Tiffin Glass Company. In 1887, he patented another design, which he assigned to the Canton Glass Company, but by October 7,1890, he signed design patent #20,186 for Tiffin as a witness. --------------------- 23T.M. Roberts, Catalogue No. 197, Minneapolis, Minnesota, about 1898. Gift of James Measell. |
The "Railroad" tray falls into a period in which he seems still to have been
employed by Cooperative, although he may have been between positions; the Canton
Company had not yet been formed. If we believe that assortments were not
repacked by Spelman Brothers, "Dahlia", "Flower Pot", "Rose in Snow" and the
"Railroad" tray must have been made by Bryce, Higbee. If this is in error,
Brown's tray was probably made by one of the two firms with which he was then
associated, Cooperative or Canton. A comparison of the "Railroad" tray and the
tray to the "Garfield Drape" water set (Fig. 22) shows an astonishing
similarity around the rim, although that seems to rest on the fact that the tray
pictured doesn't really match the rest of the set. Whether this indicates a
common factory origin for "Garfield Drape" and the "Railroad" tray is impossible
to say. Since President Garfield was assassinated in 1881, the "Garfield Drape"
plate was designed then, although the tableware may not have been produced
until a little later; apparently it was still popular in 1886.
Another recent acquisition of the Rakow Library is a jobber's catalog from about 1898;23 this also pictures the "Railroad" tray, showing that it stayed in production for at least 15 years or that it was produced again, perhaps by a different company. Both of the Bryce firms were still in existence by the mid-1890s, but the Canton firm had moved to Marion, Indiana, and was not making many tablewares. Unfortunately, these Spelman Brothers catalogs raise as many questions as they answer!
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