Description
2 Indiana Glass Colony Whitehall Tumblers in great condition. They measure 6 1/8″ high x 3 1/8″.
Indiana Glass Company Story
Posted by vintage-glass-shop
The Indiana Glass Company was founded in Dunkirk, Indiana in the year 1907. However, the story didn’t start there. In 1897, Robert James Beatty, George Beatty and George Brady purchased the railroad property and would-be plant of the company. The business was named Beatty-Brady Glass Company. After more than a year of operation, the company was purchased by the National Glass Company and was combined with eighteen other glass companies. They were then Factory #1 of the National Glass until 1904 when they started operating as an independent body under Frank W. Merry. And so it was, in December of 1907 that they became official after formally announcing their independence and their intentions of continuing their operations under the name of Indiana Glass Company.
Indiana Glass Company originally made auto head lenses. The company owned this line of the market during that time and was able to make a considerable amount of the total head lens sales. With their big success in this corner of the industry and seeing other potentials, the firm began stepping into new territories of the glass making business.
They manufactured hand-molded glass products along with machine-made pieces shortly after. It was in 1929 that the Indiana Glass Company started producing pressed patterns for their products and introduced interesting colors. The glass company also produced depression glassware as well as carnival glass during the 1930s. Their lines of tableware are quite heavy compared to some manufacturers whose products are delicate and light. From their humble beginnings, the glass company was able to produce new lines of glassware in a yearly basis. Not just one but usually several new lines each year. Because of this, the company was slowly but surely growing as a quality glass manufacturer.
From 1898 (a year after the Beatty-Brady Glass Co. was put together) up until 1929, the Indiana was able to create more than 120 pressed glass patterns excluding those made later from the Indiana Tumbler and Goblet Company. Majority of these designs are original to Indiana and are now being sought by serious collectors today.
Unlike other famous glass makers who have been leading in their industry during their time, the early Indiana Glass makers were not really into the naming thing. Their early glass patterns were not given any distinctive names that would have made them sound classier, no. What they were given instead were line numbers. Yep, just plain line numbers. The glass firm also made use of mold-etched process to create their patterns in their glass products.
After getting tired of just the plain numbers as names for their patterns, the company finally decided to name their patterns. Some of their famous designs are as follows: Avocado, Daisy, Horseshoe, Lorain, Pineapple and Floral, Sandwich, Tea Room, and Vernon.
It was in 2002 when came the closure of the Indiana Glass Company. However, Fenton Glass which was based in Williamstown, West Virginia was able to get a hold of the original glass molds previously owned by the Indiana Glass. They made use of these molds to create products of their own. But a couple of years after purchasing the molds (2007), the Fenton Glass announced that it was going to stop the operation of their factory due to financial problems.