MASON'S 1858 - XX Base - odd whittle?

[georgeoj]

This jar was brought to me by someone who thought that it looked odd. I had to agree. The marks that I thought to be cold mold whittling may be something quite different. The effect is very difficult to capture with limited photographic skills but it shows up in two of my tries. The marks are small, rectangular, regular in size and are in rings that circle the entire jar, one on top of the next, from top to bottom. My guess is that these are marks made in the manufacture of the mold that were not fully polished out. The crispness of the lettering suggests that this was a new mold.
I would be interested in knowing if anyone else has a jar with this condition and if anyone has a different opinion please say so. George

 

[georgeoj]

second pic

 

[georgeoj]

base

 

[dave3950]

Hi,

I've seen this kind of whittle before but can't tell you the exact cause. As for the bottom embossing "XX", I don't see a listing of such a mark. I can find a single "X" but no double. You could have an uncommon variation that need further investigation.

Dave

 

[coreya]

The jar is a #1787 in the red book, there were thousands of variations of base embossing on this series of jars including dots, numbers and roman numerals. The jar is neat just from the standpoint of the crudeness of it. The whittle is caused by a tempeture differance in the mold and glass or some such thing like that. The thing that raises the value of these jars is the color and they can go for anywhere from 4.00 to 5 figures. Still a nice jar

 

[glass man]

LOVE THE CRUDENESS! JAMIE

 

[RED Matthews]

Hello georgeoj, Well that is one nice fruit jar. This type of jar is made on an automatic bottle machine that makes ( Press & Blow ) fruit jars. The earliest ones made had the cut gob of molten glass, cut off from the molten glass feeder after it came through an orifice ring long enough, to give it the correct weight of glass to make the jar. Your jar has obvious bubbles in the glass to tell me that the feeder and for-hearth temperature or flow was not correct for the job.
Regarding the whittle you mentioned - looking square and running in plane levels around the jar; this would have not been from machining. The body of the mold is bored on a lathe where the vertical slide carrying the boring bar would follow a template form and turn a really smooth cavity in the mold. The letter cutting is done long after the cavity turning.
The glass that formed in the first stage mold creates the parison form, for the jar. This shapped glass is then inverted into the final blow mold, which closes around the parison, hanging it by the thread in this case, because there is no transfer bead that showed up on later jars for that hanging position. There is a blowhead that covers the top of the jar and the air pressure for the final blow, takes the glass into contact with the mold wall form and lettering in the mold.
If the mold metal is too cold for the glass to blow up tight against the cavity, it will chill and hold itself off of the iron cavity contact. This cold mold creates a ripple effect that gives the jar or bottles what people call whittleed appearance. There was no whittling done in the iron mold. There wasn't in the early wooden or ceramic molds either.
It would be interesting to me to get my hands on the jar to see how the glass parison was hung in the mold. If it were made on the Owens machine then there would have been a glass shear mark in a circle on the bottom glass. There were four or five different early glass machines that left some tell tail marks; but they are evasive to evauate with any certainty.
Thanks for bring it to us. I will study the pictures some more. I think that the "/ XX " mark was covered correctly by coryea. It is an interesting jar. RED Matthews

 

[miker]

This jar was brought to me by someone who thought that it looked odd. I had to agree. The marks that I thought to be cold mold whittling may be something quite different. The effect is very difficult to capture with limited photographic skills but it shows up in two of my tries. The marks are small, rectangular, regular in size and are in rings that circle the entire jar, one on top of the next, from top to bottom. My guess is that these are marks made in the manufacture of the mold that were not fully polished out. The crispness of the lettering suggests that this was a new mold.
I would be interested in knowing if anyone else has a jar with this condition and if anyone has a different opinion please say so. George

HI I HAVE ONE HALF GALLON LOOK IT THE BOTTOM OF THE JAR IT HAS A PONTIL MARK XX ARE THE OLDER MASONS JARS THAN YOU MIKE.

 

[miker]

HI I HAVE ONE HALF GALLON JAR LOOK AT THE JAR IT HAS A PONTIL MARK BELOW THE XX MARKS ARE THE OLDER MASONS JARS THANK YOU MIKER.

 

[UncleBruce]

HI I HAVE ONE HALF GALLON JAR LOOK AT THE JAR IT HAS A PONTIL MARK BELOW THE XX MARKS ARE THE OLDER MASONS JARS THANK YOU MIKER.

I don't recall what the round spot is called, but it is not a pontil. Some type of a vacuum mark made by a machine that held the jar while it was being finished. Unless ground or polished off a pontil will be very rough with extra glass attached to the spot or have a rust spot in the center of the base. Hopefully someone will chime in a tell us both what that mark is called 'cause I don't remember.