What a glass blower would make at the end of a long hard day....

As you can imagine blowing hot glass for 10 hours a day 6 days a week was very grueling work and I am sure the gaffers couldn't wait until the end of the day a lot of the time. There were special times when a blower would feel the need to let his inner art out of himself and when this happened some of the most beautiful early American glass that was ever created was crafted for Moms,wives,family members or other loved ones. Most of the time the glass was littered with debris as the glass which used to fashion these objects was from the bottom of the pot...literally!! A good original Whimsey has plenty of dirt,large potstones and other colors in it as it was the least pure glass available to the artist at the time.

A very early South Jersey tradition in glass from the years between 1790 to 1840 was a type copied from the glassmen from Nailsea England. This was known as looped glass. The German born gaffers would take two colors usually aqua as the dominant color and milk glass as the secondary color and looped them side by side like curtain drapery in the glass. The end result is some of the most striking exquisite early American glass ever made. When a gaffers day ended and he had made his daily allotment of bottles to fill an order he would use the small amount of glass left over from each pot in the furnace house and create beautiful end of day pieces in solid,bi-colored, and sometimes tri colored glass.These objects were not easy to make and sometimes the gaffer would remain for hours after to work to complete a piece for a loved one. To this day they are my favorite part of my collection because they were the only true art pieces being blown at the time.

As for collecting these they are in my opinion a good investment as compared to common bottles even rare historical flasks because for the most part a gaffer would have only made a small handful of these in his lifetime. I was extremely fortunate on eBay a couple of days ago as not only did I get this Gemmel bottle ( two tear dropped shaped flasks fused together ) for cheap I was surprisingly the only bidder.I have never had this happen to me before on eBay or any auction for that matter.These pieces command top dollar at auction most of the time so I feel extremely lucky and grateful to had acquired it.When I compare it to another very similar gemmel bottle in my collection it is strikingly similar in length at 8 and a 1/4 inches and the necks are turned at the exact same angles on each bottle suggesting the same artist.

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3 On the bottom of these Gemmel bottles a large irregular shaped footing was applied to allow the bottle an attempt to stand on its own. Very rarely was the gaffer successful in this endeavor so most of the time these creations were forced to lay on their sides versus standing upright.

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5 Look closely and you will see a lot of potstones and debris in the glass.

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7 Here is the new bottle shown with two other tear drop flask creations. One is an Identical is shape and size Gemmel bottle with glass rigaree on its edges,the other is a fish with wrapped thin threading .I have never seen another one of these fishes in this fashion before. The threading is very indicative of a Germanic influence in the make up.

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3 You can see the similarities in this piece to the looped glass one.

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