02/28/2026
From the collection of the New Bedford Museum of Glass, this heavy lead-glass salt dish (H: 3") is related to the famous "scale" or "drapery" pattern tumbler once thought to have been the first piece of glass pressed by the Boston & Sandwich Glass Company. For an illustration of the tumbler design, see Ruth Webb Lee's book Sandwich Glass : The History of the Boston & Sandwich Glass Company (1939, 1947, 1966), plate 17 (shared in the post comments below). Lee quotes the German author Gustav Pazaurek's description of the pattern in a publication of the early 20th century as "scaly cut." The story she relates about the Sandwich tumbler, considered dubious on many points, can be read on pages 87-88 of her book. Briefly, it maintains that the tumbler was pressed in 1827 by factory agent Deming Jarves and "a Massacusetts carpenter," and that the glass factory workers, being fearful that the new technology would cost them their jobs, threatened Jarves' life and compelled him to stay indoors after nightfall for a period of six weeks. Jarves carefully set aside the first tumbler pressed in the mold, and later it was loaned for display at the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, where it was accidentally broken.
Many decades later and subsequent to the publication of Lee's Sandwich Glass book, scholars discovered that the same pattern appears in a trade catalog published in 1840 by the French glass-seller Launay, Hautin & Company. Jane Shadel Spilman, in her book American and European Pressed Glass in the Collection of The Corning Museum of Glass (1981), describes the pattern as "scale" and attributes it broadly to France. She reprints the catalog illustration on page 30, where one can clearly read the heading "Service moulé à draperies," and where one can clearly see the letter "B," which is described earlier in the catalog as designating the maker Baccarat (see post comments below for the illustration). When referring to this pattern, I will revert to the original French catalog and use the term "drapery" for the pattern name and "drape" for the drapery motif.
Much of the French tableware that was produced during this period and thought to have been pressed was, in fact, mechanically mold-blown. Features of the exterior pattern can be felt faintly on the interior surface of the glass, and, tellingly, every drapery pattern tumbler that I have examined (about half a dozen) was mold-blown. They all seem to be French. Conversely, the one example of the drapery pattern known to me that was pressed (a lamp in the collection of the Sandwich Glass Museum), has a strong attribution to Sandwich. It would appear that both companies made the pattern using completely different forming techniques.
While close examination of the NBMOG salt dish indicates (somewhat inconclusively) that it's bowl was mold-blown, the foot appears to have been pressed. It bears a visual resemblance to glass feet made during the late 18th and early 19th centuries employing the "lemon-squeezer" technique of stamping the glass into a mold with a hand-held, star-patterned plunging die. The foot would be formed upside-down in the mold, and collectors observed that the star-ornamented concavity pressed into its underside resembled a lemon-squeezer (see comments for an illustration of the underside of the salt dish). Mold lines in pressed glass typically appear where the parts of the mold come together, and often these lines can indicate the specific molding technique employed. Unfortunately, none are visible on our salt dish, since the entire surface of the glass was highly polished as a careful finishing touch by the manufacturer (a treatment more typical of Baccarat than of Sandwich). Examining the salt dish, it is even hard to determine if the foot was formed separately and applied to the bowl or formed together with the bowl in the same mold. No glass wafer was used to join separately-molded parts, but there is a clean line around the top of the stem where it joins the underside of the bowl.
Although related, the drapery pattern is different from the NBMOG salt dish pattern. Notice that each drape forms a U shape, while each loop of the NBMGO salt dish pattern forms an inverted U. No footed salt dishes with the inverted U design appear in the French catalog, but other tableware forms are shown with it, and these are identified as "Moulé à feuilles," or "Molded leaf" (see illustration in comments below). I will, therefore, be describing the loop motif in the NBMOG salt dish with the unexpected pattern designation "leaf." Come to think of it, though, M'Kee & Brothers of Pittsburgh illustrate a loop pattern in their 1864 trade catalog named "Leaf," a fact that I always found peculiar (see comments for an illustration of the M'Kee design). The French catalog shows leaves with pointed as well as rounded tips, and the pointed ones do actually look like leaves. A little. (See comments for illustration). The catalog designates both varieties as "B. et St. L.," meaning they were made by both Baccarat and St. Louis. Some of the pointed leaf forms, however, are designated just St. Louis.
I would be happy to hear your thoughts about our footed salt dish, and also to learn if other examples are known to you. My preliminary guess would be that it is French, and that mechanical mold-blowing (one version of which used a bellows to generate the pressure), was powerful enough to form the foot and bowl together in a single mold. Much still to learn!
