Keene New Hampshire glass whimsy hats.

[wolffbp]

I stumbled upon this little factoid today... The term whimsey may be somewhat of a misnomer. It appears that hats were actually production pieces and their intended use was as a salt.
1827 Newspaper Clipping:

 

[Steve/sewell]

Thanks Brian,is that your own newspaper or one you found online?I have picked up about 50 old newspapers in the last week most between 1800 and 1827.I have a lot of neat ads I am going to post as soon as I have some time.

 

[wolffbp]

It's from an online paper

 

[CazDigger]

I have also seen that before, but I think it was a different ad/reference than Brian's that referenced hat salts. It explains how common the blown three mold hats reportedly made at Sandwich are, since they were standard production pieces. I still believe many of the freeblown hats are truly whimseys though.

 

[wolffbp]

I'm not so sure I agree with that (but that's ok, wouldn't it be boring if we always agreed) considering form without function was not the norm.

 

[Steve/sewell]

Hi Brian it all makes perfect sense,I can see an operation as large as The New England Glass Co. and South Boston having these as regular routinely made items turned out in great numbers as the clientel they were going after had much more buying power and more use for these then the common folk.I can also see a worker familiar with the making of the hats produce a few of these at the end of the day if the metal was sufficient and the owner Okd the use of time.One thing I will say regaurding the hats in my own collection is there are abnormaly large amounts of debris and potstones typical of (the bottom of the barrel frit) indicating they were at least produced at the end of normal daily production.Lastly the fact that they are somewhat rare tells me that they were not for the most part of the daily made items but rather specialty items at most glass works.I do believe your thought raises good speculation as people from this era did not waste anything,time money,products anything so a useless hat decoration was probably not true but a container for some sort of product seems more likely.I found an ad in an 1820s newspaper from Baltimore showing this exact type of hat for sale. In researching the style of the hats these glass items were copied from it is evident this type of derby was popular from 1810 to 1840 which justifys to me anyway as to how old these hats potentially are.
Thanks again Brian and Mark,hey I did pick up another hat this one from one of the large early Boston area factorys.I should have it by the weekend I will post it at that time.

 

[CazDigger]

Regarding (some) hats being whimseys, there are so-called whimseys that were functional (wide mouth jars made out of bottle molds for example) but there are a great many that had no function other than to show off their glassblowing skills. eg. glass canes/batons, chains, swords, animals etc.

 

[wolffbp]

touche' []