The company, established originally as Hatch and Clark in 1884, became T. B. Clark & Company the following year. The company's original cutting shop was in Honesdale, PA, but a new factory was opened two miles away in Seelyville in 1891 with the Honesdale location continuing to serve as the company's headquarters. Clark used cutting blanks made by the Dorflinger Glass Company in nearby White Mills. Of the three trademarks, below, the script signature in the center is frequently found acid-etched on the company's cut glass. The other two trademarks, both registered, probably were used only on paper labels and printed matter. T. B. Clark & Company closed in 1927.
T. B. Clark & Company established a subsidiary, the Maple City Glass Company (a cutting shop), in Seelyville in 1898. When J. S. O'Connor sold his cut-glass factory in Hawley, PA to Clark in 1902, Clark moved its Maple City company to O'Connor's old factory. The three maple leaf trademarks illustrated here are said to have been acid-etched on glass cut by Maple City, but the writer can only confirm those on the left and the right. The Maple City factory closed in 1911.
The Clark company also established a second subsidiary, the Lackawanna Cut Glass Company, in Scranton, PA, in 1900. This "direct from factory to consumer" business existed for only a few years, c1903-c1905. Lackawanna's trademark, an L enclosed within a diamond, was acid-etched on some of its glassware, and it may also have been used on a paper label.
An even more shadowy business association existed between T. B. Clark & Company and C. G. Alford & Company. This company acid-etched the glass it sold with the trademark ALFORD within a diamond, similar to Lackawanna's trademark. Alford maintained the fiction that it produced the glass it sold. Most, perhaps all, of Alford's glass was cut by T. B. Clark & Company.
Further information on the Clark, Maple City, and Lackawanna companies can be found in Barbe and Reed (2003). C. G. Alford & Company is discussed by Lloyd Bishop in an article entitled "C. G. Alford roots found", published in The Hobstar, Vol. 16, No. 6, pp. 1, 6-7 (Mar 1994).
[Compilation Catalog, 1896-c1910] T. B. CLARK & CO., AMERICAN CUT GLASS. American Cut Glass Association, n.d. Bound with 1905, 1908, and c1910 Clark catalogs and 1904, 1906, 1909, and 1911 Maple City catalogs. Each catalog is paginated separately. (The 1896 catalog is also available separately [Pyne Press 1972, pp. 107-132]).
[1901 Catalog] T. B. CLARK & CO., RICH CUT GLASS. American Cut Glass Association, n.d. (38 pp.).
[1903-5 Catalog] LACKAWANNA CUT GLASS CO. American Cut Glass Association. n.d., [iii] + pp. 4-84 (CMG f-8271C).
[1904 Price List] C. G. Alford & Company, NYC, 10 pp. (CMG f-53C)
[1905 Catalog] C. G. Alford & Company, NYC. OUR 1905 SHOWING OF RICH CUT GLASS, 56 pp. [CMG f-53C].
Updated 16 Jan 2005