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18-671: The company was founded by Deming Jarves in 1837 in South Boston, Massachusetts , as the Mount Washington Glass Works. Jarves had previously founded the New England Glass Company in 1818. Mount Washington did not at first have an official name, and until around 1850 was informally known as Russell's Glass House, after Luther Russell, the glasshouse superintendent. The first known use of the Mount Washington name

36-679: A "prosperous cabinetmaker." He worked for the New England Glass Company between 1818 and 1825. He conducted business from offices in Boston, and the company's factory was located in East Cambridge. In 1825, Jarves began the Boston & Sandwich Glass Company with its factory in Sandwich, Massachusetts , specializing in blown glassware, mold-blown glass, and machine-pressed glass. He built

54-455: A technique involving trapping air bubbles inside a piece of glass in a symmetrical pattern, which can be applied to ice buckets, decanters, glassware, and other pierces. This became a trademark of the company. Pairpoint's reverse painted lamps are generally considered to be the most popular and expensive of such lamps on the antique market. Rare Pairpoint lamps have been sold for six figures ( USD ), while more commonly available lamps have sold in

72-451: Is known for three kinds of glass lampshades, originally produced from the mid-1890s through the mid-1920s: reverse painted landscape shades (where the glass is hand painted on the inside surface so colors appear softly through the glass), blown out reverse painted shades, and ribbed reverse painted shades, mostly with floral designs and landscape scenes. In 1910, the company began using a spherical knop (or "bubble ball") on some of its pieces,

90-833: The Brooklyn Museum . These include pitchers, goblets and candlesticks. Early Pairpoint pieces are also a part of the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City , including silver candlesticks from 1905, a rose glass bowl from 1898, and a glass vase ca. 1886-94; the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston; and the New Bedford Museum of Glass . A 2011 exhibition at the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York ,

108-452: The 1880s, the company primarily produced art glass . In 1885, it introduced Burmese art glass , a translucent, heat reactive glass that shades from yellow at the bottom to pink at the top. The company became known for this type of glass, obtaining a British patent for it in 1886, and presenting a number of Burmese pieces to Queen Victoria . In 1880, British silver designer Thomas Pairpoint (1838-1902) resigned his position as head designer at

126-705: The Antique Collectors' Club of Woodbridge , England. Deming Jarves Deming Jarves (1790–1869) was a 19th-century American glass manufacturer in Massachusetts . He has been called the "father of the American glass industry". Jarves joined the glass industry in 1809 when he, with a group of investors, gained control of the window glass company Boston Crown Glass. During the War of 1812 , American glass manufacturers lost access to high–quality sand and red lead, which

144-746: The Meriden Brittania Company and founded the Pairpoint Manufacturing Company, which was established in New Bedford as a silver manufacturer supplying Mount Washington with silver-plated metal mounts for its glass lamps and other products. In 1894, the two companies merged and in 1900 were renamed the Pairpoint Corporation. In 1939, the company was reorganized as Gundersen Glass Works, named after master glassblower and new owner Robert Gundersen. After Gundersen's death in 1952,

162-564: The US. Pairpoint returned to the US in 1967, and in 1970 opened a newly built factory in Sagamore, Massachusetts , near the Cape Cod Canal . The invention of the light bulb and the corresponding rise of the use of electricity was central to the company's success in the late 19th century. In the early 20th century through the early 1930s, its distinctive glass lampshades gained international popularity. In

180-542: The company became the Gundersen-Pairpoint Glass Works until 1957, when it was renamed a final time to Pairpoint Glass Company. Now under the guidance of Robert Bryden, it ceased operations at its New Bedford plant and relocated briefly to East Wareham, Massachusetts . The company moved overseas in 1958 to leased facilities in Spain , exporting limited quantities of stemware, perfume bottles and paperweights back to

198-584: The company into what one writer calls "the most important manufacturer of pressed glass in 19th-century America"; he stayed with it until 1858, and it continued until 1888. Jarves founded the Mt. Washington Glass Works in South Boston under the management of Captain Luther Russell. His children included John (d.1863), James , and Deming Jarves. Brooklyn Museum Too Many Requests If you report this error to

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216-441: The efficiency of his furnaces that used wood as a fuel source. He worked with molds and was an early user of pressed glass machines. Jarves found the Boston & Sandwich Glass Company , which became famous for its pressed glass . By 1835, Jarves had caused significant changes to the American glassmaking industry, and his Boston & Sandwich Glass Company was known world–wide. Jarves was born in 1790 in Boston , Massachusetts to

234-411: The high four figures. The company produces a range of glass pieces, including custom pendants, sconces, chandeliers and accent lighting. Pairpoint also produces barware, candlesticks, bookends, bowls and vases, as well as a line of controlled bubble ball door knobs. Pairpoint products are handmade in the US. More than 50 Pairpoint silver pieces from 1880 to 1929 are a part of the permanent collection of

252-423: The second half of the 20th century, Pairpoint went on a decline, when it started producing a less expensive, lower quality product in an attempt to expand its customer base and combat foreign competition. In 2015, Jeffrey Tulman and his brother Gary Tulman acquired Pairpoint and returned the company to its classic high-end designs, reintroducing the revitalized product to collectors and luxury glass buyers. Pairpoint

270-461: Was an essential ingredient for high–quality glass. After the war, British manufacturers began dumping low–priced glass in the United States. This caused many American glass manufacturers, including Boston Crown Glass, to go out of business. In 1818 Jarves and an investor group founded the New England Glass Company , where Jarves researched ways to produce red lead using domestic sources. By 1819 he

288-613: Was in the 1857 publication History of South Boston . In 1870, Mount Washington relocated to New Bedford, Massachusetts . That year, the company was briefly renamed W. L. Libbey & Company, before being incorporated as the Mount Washington Glass Works the following year. In 1876, the name was changed slightly, to the Mount Washington Glass Company. From 1876 through 1881, the company produced an extensive line of lighting goods and other glassware , including glass chimneys, fine blown cut glass and pressed glassware . In

306-418: Was producing red lead, which enabled the production of better quality glass. Glassmakers kept their methods secret, meaning a group of glassmakers could leave a company and cause it to end operations. Jarves smuggled glassmaking talent from Europe to Boston, and kept a book of various glass recipes. This ended the threat from glassmakers leaving the company. He also worked to improve technology such as improving

324-641: Was titled Mt. Washington and Pairpoint: American Glass From the Gilded Age to the Roaring Twenties . It told the story of the company and featured over 150 pieces from the 1880s to the 1930s, including art glass, cut glass, kerosene and electric lamps, and decorative tableware. Kenneth Morley Wilson, a renowned historian of glass manufacture in America, compiled a history of the company in Mt. Washington and Pairpoint Glass , in two volumes published in 2005 and 2011 by

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