Browse Items (124 total)

147-1970
Josiah Spode established his pottery in 1770 and became well-known for his porcelain. After being known as Copeland & Garrett (1833-1847), the company transitioned in 1847 to W. T. Copeland & Sons and remained so until 1970; the 1900…

1868-1930s
James Moses founded the Mercer Pottery Company in 1868, claiming to have produced the first semi-porcelain china in the United States. A 1922 advertisement for Mercer's hotel ware is below. The company was in business until the 1930s.…

One of many small potteries established in Trenton, New Jersey at the latter end of the 19th-century, Burroughs & Mountford specialized in table wares, toilet wares, and tiles (as advertised in the 1888 image below). Burroughs & Mountford produced…

1862-1933
Established in 1862, Greenwood Pottery was run by William Tams, a seasoned potter from Staffordshire, England, with Trenton financial backers. Greenwood quickly became one of the largest producers of household and hotel china, closing…

1880-present
Robert Augustus Chesebrough created petroleum jelly from “rod wax” used by oil workers for cuts and bruises; he made this discovery in 1859, and the product was available on a limited bases in the 1860s. Chesebrough Manufacturing…

An early 20th-century bottle of Borolyptol, an "antiseptic and germicidal fluid for internal and external use" commonly used as a mouthwash, itch reliever, and antiseptic

1891-1920
Pitkin & Brooks was an importer of china and glassware, established in 1891 and incorporated in 1901; the company did not produced its own wares, but applied its own makers’ mark to all the products it sold. The business had a large…

Lemp Beer Label

1875-1946
Aurelius Stone Hinds purchased his own drug store in 1870, developed his soon-to-be-famous Hinds’ Honey & Almond Cream. Five years later, the A. S. Hinds Company was established. The Honey & Almond Cream was heavily marketed toward women…

1874-present
Scott and Bowne was formed in 1874 with the partnership of Alfred Scott and Samuel Bowne; their most famous product was Scott’s Emulsion, an emulsion of cod liver oil meant to make the substance “palatable as milk” (as the 1884 ad…

1871-1920
Hannis Distilling Company was the 1871 restructuring of Henry S. Hannis & Co, established 1863; both tapped into the booming whiskey industry in 19th-century Philadelphia. Hannis’s Mount Vernon Pure Rye Whiskey won first award at…

1893-1928
Adelbert Merton Foster took over the the Chicago branch of Dean, Foster & Co. in 1893, naming the ten-year-old division after himself. A glass wholesaler, A. M. Foster was closely associated with Dean, Foster & Co. (referred to as “The…

1880-present
Founded by Charles M. Higgins in 1880, Higgins Ink is still a top producer of ink worldwide. Just eight years after opening its doors, Higgins was providing ink for periodicals like Harper’s Weekly; this success allowed the company to…

The colorless glass base from a bottle of AbilenA Natural Cathartic Water found in 2010 at the Charnley-Persky House. A 1910 advertisement for AbilenA, a "cathartic water" bottled in Abilene, Kansas used as a laxative.

A 1910 photograph originally titled "Noon hour. Illinois Glass Co., (Shop #7.) These boys all work in above glass company. Tuesday noon. Location: Alton, Illinois," taken by Lewis Wickes Hine.
RRH

A 1903 advertisement for the Streator bottle and glass Company in Streator, Illinois, boasting their wine and liquor bottles would not break in shipment (as their competitors’ bottles would).
RRH

An advertisement for Katharmon Chemical Company, boasting Kathermon's uses as an antiseptic, prophylactic, and detergent.
RRH

1895-present
First introduced to the market in 1895 and marketed exclusively to dentists, Listerine quickly became a household name and became one of the first medical products offered over the counter in 1914. These two ads from 1917 advocate…

1901-1932
A figure from the 1915 patent for a new design for the Coca-Cola bottle, created by the Root Glass Company. Established by Chapman J. Root in 1901, the Root Glass Company is best known for manufacturing bottles for Coca-Cola, beginning in…

1856-present
In 1849, a German immigrant named August Krug began brewing beer in the basement of his restaurant in Milwaukee; the next year, he would hire a 20-year-old German immigrant named Joseph Schlitz as a bookkeeper. In 1856, Krug passed…

1921-present
Founded in 1921 by Harry Soref, Master Lock still produces a wide range of padlocks today. An early innovator in padlocks, Master Lock patented the Laminated Steel padlock in 1924, the same manner in which bank vaults are protected, as…

1875-1920
Started by Samuel H. Klein of the Klein Brothers distillery. Advertisements for the liquor (as the one below) were known to be scandalous for the time, often depicting young men in mortar boards reminiscent of the institution for which the…

1902-1964
The Hazel Glass Company merged with the Atlas Glass Company in 1902, forming the Hazel-Atlas Glass Company, which quickly became one of the largest glass manufacturers in the world iwth 14 plants across the country. In 1957, the company…

1900-1962
Edwin M. Knowles was born in 1869, the son of Isaac Watt Knowles, founder of Knowles, Taylor & Knowles Co. (one of the largest American pottery companies at the turn of the 20th century). A graduate of Harvard, Edwin took control of…

Henry W. Putnam was born in 1825 in Essex, NY and entered the glass business at the age of 34 with a patent for a wire contraption that held a cork in place in the mouth of a bottle. Putnam’s history is tied up in that of Charles de Quillfeldt and…

1886-1902
Cunningham & Co. Ltd. was just one iteration of the glassworks headed by the Cunningham family in Pittsburgh in the second half of the 19th-century. The family got its start with the Pittsburg City Glass Works (ad below) around 1845; this…