PATENTED CUT-GLASS PATTERNS, 1875-1920
Patents could be obtained for three-and-a-half, seven, or fourteen years. A recent examination of the fourteen patents that were held by, or closely associated with, T. G. Hawkes & Company for the period 1882 to 1914, indicates that slightly more than half of them were for fourteen years, a third were for seven years, and only two of the fourteen were for a period of three-and-a-half years (note 2). The length of term is not related to the quality of a patented design. In fact, the presence of a patent is not a guarantee of quality. Many non-patented patterns are among the most highly regarded designs that are sought by today's collectors. Patented patterns are important, however, because they help date designs where catalogs are not available, thereby assisting the researcher in his attempt to reconstruct the changes that have occurred over time in the design of cut-glass objects.
Although Revi's compilation is sufficient for many purposes, the serious student will want to tap into the nation's storehouse of patents that is available at the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office's Web site: (USPTO). Here one finds complete, written specifications and drawings (where appropriate) for each patent. In a few cases the drawings that originally accompanied the specifications are presently "unavailable" on-line. All is not lost, however, because one can usually find them in Revi's book although that author often eliminates the letters and numbers that were originally attached to the patents' illustrations and that clarify the accompanying texts. After 1888 most of the illustrations are drawings made by professional draftsmen; previously photographs were used (note 3).
There has been speculation as to the effectiveness of patents in protecting the proprietorship of cut-glass designs, but, thus far, there has been no in-depth study of this legality. It is reasonable to conclude, however, that while some designs were undoutedly pirated, in general the patenting process must have been throught effective. Otherwise, companies that made extensive use of the patenting process -- for example T. G. Hawkes & Company and the Libbey Glass Company, both of which began obtaining patents during the 1880s -- would not have continued to patent designs well into the twentieth century. Hawkes's first and last patents for geometric designs were obtain in 1882 (the "MacDonald" pattern [note 4]) and 1911 (Willow), while Libbey's first and last patents were designed in 1887 (Victoria) and 1906 (Star and Feather, "Wicker", and Corona [note 5]).
Although it should be possible to procede quickly with an analysis of cut-glass patterns once a design's patent number is known, this is not always the case. While a design may be identified as being intended for cut glass, this information is usually not specifically indicated in the patent's specification. Instead, the purpose of the design as stated in the patent's title is usually stated somewhat ambiguously. Statements such as "Design for the Ornamentation of Glassware" and "Design for a Glass Vessel" are commonly used. Even the texts of the specifications often do not clarify matters. It, therefore, falls to the investigator to decide whether a design was intended for cut glass or for some other process such as pressed glass. Many designs intended exclusively for pressed glass were patented during the period considered. From an examination of the record it is evident that errors have been made in the past: Designs intended for pressed glass have sometimes been interpreted as being designs for cut glass. The reverse situation does not seem to have occurred. By the late 1890s the specifications themselves had become less detailed. Eventually the descriptions ceased entirely, and only the patents' drawings remained to indicate the appearance of the patterns for which patents were sought.
A summary of the two hundred thirty-five design patents for cut and/or engraved glassware were granted by the U. S. Patent Office during the period 1875 through 1920 is given in the graph below. At the present time one must know patent numbers in order to use the USPTO Web site efficiently. (Other means of conducting searches will be available in the future.) Unfortunately, Revi includes only a few patent numbers in his book. Aid is available, however, in the form of an index to design patents concerned with glass that was abstracted from Patent Office publications by J. Stanley Brothers during the 1950s and 1960s. It exists in typescript at the Rakow Library, Corning, NY. Using this index it was possible for the writer to assign patent numbers to almost all of the patents listed in Revi's book. The Brothers index also provided an independent check on the completeness of Revi's compilation, and a few additional design patents were discovered. Unfortunately, the Brothers index is not complete; most of the year 1915 and all of 1916, 1917, and 1918 are missing. While it has been possible to locate some cut-glass patents for these years by using the "date granted" information provided by Revi, together with trial-and-error, this procedure proved to be excessively time-consuming and was discontinued As a result the patents in the final pentad on the graph are undoubtedly under-represented. In fact, an additional patent, no. 52,413, granted to Charles L. Sullivan on 10 Sep 1918, was discovered after the 235 patents were graphed on the following histogram. This patent is a simple foral design which was assigned to the Fostoria Glass Company. Several similar patents probably await discovery. Consequently, the total number of patents graphed (235) is not written in stone and will eventually have to be modified (increased). It is, however, unlikely that this pentad (1916-20) will be found to contain many (any?) patterns of interest to collectors of brilliant-period cut glass.
Several patents in Revi's book are identified as being designs for cut-glass articles, when, in fact, it is clear (at least to this writer) that they were meant for pressed glass. These include design patent no. 31,078, a pressed-glass pitcher by A. H. Heisey (pressed-glass pattern No. 305, according to Dunbar 2000, p. 158); no. 37,821, a pressed-glass plate produced by the Tarentum Glass Company; and no. 41,681, a metal lamp base with a pressed-glass shade, the whole designed by the president of the Golden Novelty Manufacturing Company.
Also excluded from the analysis are designs from the 1910s by Reuben Haley for the United States Glass Company as well as those by Maurice A. Smith for McKee Glass Company. These patterns were used on pressed glass where only a few details were cut or engraved, with the exception of patent no. 50,221 ("Spray"), an engraved pattern that Smith designed for the United States Glass Company.
Several other patents for pressed glass have, in the past, been incorrectly identified as cut-glass patterns. To reject these identifications today is to invite controversy. So be it! The early investigators involved are, not surprisingly, Daniel (1950), Pearson (1965), and Revi (1965). The "problem" patents are briefly listed here as three cases, A to C. The links provided illustrate these patents. Although the date of the first patent precedes our time-period, it is listed because it has been referred to as "the first patent for a cut glass design" (Pearson 1965, p. 122), an opinion shared by Daniel (1950, p. 297). Revi (1965, p. 358) lists it only as a cut-glass pattern. The second case consists of a group of similar patents that Daniel believed to be cut-glass patterns. These patents were ignored by both Pearson and Revi. The third case was believed by both Daniel and Revi to be a cut-glass pattern; Pearson does not mention it in his first two books but does include it in the third volume of his ENCYCLOPEDIA as a cut-glass pattern.
NOTICE TO THE READER: Although the writer believes that the following design patents were used for pressed glass only, he would like to hear from readers who have unequivocal evidence that they were also produced in cut glass. Ken Howe writing in The Hobstar in 2002, has revived interest in this subject by claiming (erroneously) that John Ernest Miller's pat. no. 16,997 was used for cut glass. He compounds this error by making the same claim for Miller's pat. no. 17,186 (not listed here). The several patents granted to Miller were all for pressed glass, not cut glass.
Patent No. / "Coined" Name / Patentee / Date Application Filed / Date Granted / Assignee
Case B: Leighton and Miller
16,994 / "Leighton's Bow-knot" / William Leighton, Jr. / 4 Aug 1886 / 23 Aug 1886 1886 / none
16,995 / "Diagonal-Maltese Cross" / William Leighton, Jr. / 1 Sep 1886 / 23 Nov 1886 / none
16,997 / "Checkered Maltese" / John E. Miller / 18 Feb 1886 / 23 Nov 1886 / none
Case C: Schreiber
27,321 / "Dunkirk" / Herman Schreiber / 24 May 1897 / 13 Jul 1897 / Ohio Flint Glass Company
Sixty-five percent of the total number of patents used to construct the above histogram consists of geometric patterns. The remainder, 35%, can be described as realistic patterns, usually floral in design. Not unexpectedly this histogram shows a bimodal distribution of patents, with modes (peaks) occuring during the 1891-95 and 1911-15 pentads. The former is composed entirely of geometric patterns and indicates, in part, the increase in cut-glass activity stimulated by the Columbian Exposition of 1893. The latter mode contains a mix of realistic and geometric patterns, with the former dominating by a ratio of 6-to-1.
Although the earliest realistic patterns were not patented until 1902, this type of cut glass quickly became popular, encouraging designers to apply for patents during the following fifteen years. While several of the realistic patterns are simple, stylized representations of flowers, such as the daisy and the rose, there are more adventurous designs as well. Perhaps the most unusual is an automobile cut, not engraved, on a bowl by William H. Hawken, and assigned by him to the Irving Cut Glass Company (pat. no. 44,003). The most influential realistic patterns would seem to be those by Henry P. Sinclaire whose neo-classical designs of 1910-1916 were quickly emulated by The Pairpoint Corporation and L. Straus & Sons.
The number of geometric patterns patented decreased every pentad after 1891-95. Paradoxically, several highly detailed geometric patterns were patented during the years after 1905 when realistic patterns were growing in popularity. These "super-brilliant" patterns include Sinclaire's Assyrian (1909) and Snow Flakes & Holly (1911) patterns, Hawkes' Panel (1909) and Willow (1911) patterns, and Egginton's "Trellis" (1909), Hunt's Royal (1911), and Meriden's Alhambra (1911) patterns. Several non-patented designs, similarly detailed and brilliant, were also produced at this time. It is believed that this activity was an attempt by cut-glass companies to stimulate sales by designing patterns that would be difficult for the companies that made pressed glass in imitation of cut glass to produce. The pressed-glass manufacturers were equal to the challenge, however, and the attempt -- which ignored changes in public taste -- was not a success. The final geometric designs of the period, very simple in concept, were assigned to the H. C. Fry Glass Company in 1917. The next year saw the patenting of only one design, the realistic Patrician pattern by Thomas A. Shanley who assigned the patent to his employer, the International Silver Company.
We know from experience that while patented patterns were usually effective designs, a great many other patterns were also of fine quality but were never patented. The presence of a patent, therefore, does not guarantee a "great" pattern, but it does insure that the pattern, with few exceptions, is aesthetically pleasing. This might sound like "damning with faint praise" but it is not. Patented designs can often be seen as islands of taste in a sea of cut-glass flotsam.
NOTES:
1. Revi's "new" book, published in 2000, is, in fact, the 1965 book reset with virtually no revision. It is the older book masquerading as a new one, with a new (and misleading) title, ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN CUT AND ENGRAVED GLASS. Most of the errors in the earlier edition have been retained in the so-called new book.
2. Regarding the number of years covered by the Hawkes patents, Spillman comments that "... from 1889, the term was always fourteen years" (Spillman 1996, p. 184). This is true only for the nineteenth century. After 1900 only two of the Hawkes patents were for fourteen years, the other four patents -- including the famous Panel and Willow patterns -- were for seven years.
3. In her discussion of the patented Brazilian pattern by Hawkes Spillman (1996, p. 180) writes that "a draftsman employed by Knight Brothers [-- the law firm that represented Hawkes --] did drawings to accompany the [patent] description". She then makes the erroneous statement "Eventually, photographs replace the draftsman's drawings". Actually, just the opposite occurred. Several companies, among them T. G. Hawkes & Company, used photographs in the 1880s to convey the detail that was required in patent illustrations. This was something of a pioneering application of photography to glassware, and the results were not particularly good. In the case of the Hawkes company photographs were used from 1882 to the year Spillman mentions, 1889, when all three of the patent applications that were submitted during that year were accompanied by drawings. From this date until its last patent in 1914, all of Hawkes' patent applications were accompanied by drawings.
The reader can readily note the deficiencies of photography during the 1880s by examining Hawkes' patent illustrations which are provided by Revi (1965, pp. 176-186). Other companies that used photography in the 1880s, such as Dorflinger, Mt. Washington, and the New England Glass Company, also had switched to drawings by the early 1890s, and they continued to use them. Draftsmen's drawings had completely replaced photographs.
4.Quotation marks are used to indicate assigned, or "coined", names. These are patterns whose official, catalog names have yet to be discovered. Some assigned names have been in general use for more than fifty years.
5.Both the "Wicker" and Corona patterns were designed by Dennis F. Spillane. In the past the latter design was often referred to as the "Spillane" pattern or "Trefoils with Rosettes" before its catalog name was discovered. The patent drawing for "Wicker" omits the hobstar motif with the result that collectors often do not recognize the pattern. An ice cream tray, complete with hobstars, is shown in IDENTIFYING AMERICAN BRILLIANT CUT GLASS by B. and L. Boggess (1996, item 628), but the pattern is not identified.
Updated 27 May 2006