Mason’s Patent 1858 With Cobalt Striations

Mason’s Patent Nov 30th 1858

Ball Glass Manufacturing Co., Muncie, Indiana

Aquamarine Midget Pint with Cobalt Blue Striations

Provenance: Darrell Plank Collection

Many of us might associate color swirls with a glass of water. As a child, we might have borrowed mothers’ food colors and conducted our own chemistry experiments by putting drops of color in a clear glass of hot or cold water and marveled at the beautiful swirls. We could have played with glass marbles with swirls of color. The eye appeal of swirls even reached out to our universe as we looked at far-off images of colliding galaxies, gasses, and stars taken by our Hubbell Space Telescope.

Chemistry experiments with food color drops in a later Ball Mason jar.

We have a number of early American glass pieces in our museum with glass swirls or striations as we call them as collectors. This is when the natural or intended color of the piece has an alien streaking of color within the form usually appearing as swirls. This condition can be extremely pleasing and is highly desirable with glass collectors though it may have been originally unintended by the person blowing the glass.

This specific museum example is a midget pint Mason’s Patent Nov 30th 1858 jar in aquamarine. The striations are dark cobalt blue. The jar is extremely rare. It was made in Muncie, Indiana at Ball Glass Mfg Company.

See a GIV-7 Masonic Arch Eagle historical flask and a Concentric Rings Target Ball and a Mason’s GCCo Patent 1858 Jar with striations as examples from other museum galleries.