Among the industries that colonial settlers sought to establish in America were glass manufactories, with much early production focused on utilitarian window glass and bottles. By the early 1800s, American glasshouses were producing a wider array of goods, including much more highly refined table glass and ornaments that employed a range of fabrication and decoration techniques—blowing, pressing, cutting, and engraving. Exemplifying the best of American blown glass of the time is a two-handled urn, probably made between 1830 and 1840 by the New England Glass Company near Boston. Founded in 1818, the New England Glass Company later moved to Toledo, Ohio, and was renamed the Libbey Glass Company; it continues today as Libbey, Inc. Made of brilliant lead glass, this urn is remarkable for its decorative features and for its successful design.

With a form derived from the krater of classical antiquity, the urn expresses the fashion of its day for ancient Greek prototypes. The lower half of the urn’s body is decorated with dramatic, swirling gadrooning that contrasts with the fine spiral threading that surrounds the urn’s mouth and neck. Boldly profiled handles sweep outward from the neck and return to the body, attached with rigaree (crimped, ribbon-like bands of glass) and open-loop finials. Enclosed within a void in the stem is a United States silver half-dime coin dated 1830; the ringed treatment of the rest of the stem continues as concentric rings on the foot.

Urns such as this example are extremely rare and would not have been part of the regular production of the factories where they were made. For example, some are known to have been commissioned as presentation objects for weddings or similar events. They would have been treasured reminders of important milestones or achievements, and today they continue to provide sparkling testimony to their makers’ skills.