History, Natural History & the Arts
The Redford Crown Glass Works in Clinton County, NY, was one of the most important of some forty New York State glass concerns operating after 1830.
The company’s articles of incorporation show that the factory was incorporated by “Gurdon Corning, Gershaw Cook, John S. Foster and Charles W. Corning.” [Read more…] about Glass Making at Redford Crown Glass Works in Clinton County
According to J. Leander Bishop’s A History of American Manufactures from 1608 to 1860 among the early settlers on Manhattan Island was a glass maker Jan Smeedes who is supposed to have been among the first to receive an allotment of land on the present [1880] South William Street between Wall and Pearl.
He probably carried on the business of glass making on the east side of the street just north of Hanover Square. This street formerly bore within the above limits the name of “the Glass maker’s street” and afterward Smee Street from its original occupant. [Read more…] about The Early History of Glass Making in New York State
The emergence of the bottling industry in New York State occurred due to the rise of the leisure economy and the fashion for the kind of mineral waters available at natural spas.
Prior to the availability of chlorinated water, inhabitants of many highly populated areas of the world avoided unmixed water from most sources for fear of contamination. [Read more…] about The Water Cure, Bottled Water & New York’s Local Bottling Industry
On Friday, August 30th in 1805, Matthew Prendergast set off on horseback from Sharon, Connecticut. Matthew was about 50 years old, a resident of Amenia in Dutchess County, NY, just across the state line from Sharon. He was comfortably well off, but definitely not super rich, and he suffered from rheumatism.
He had a few errands to do on the way, but he was planning on heading north and taking the waters at Ballston Springs, where he had visited in the past. He took his time, stopping several times, including at Kinderhook, Albany and Troy. [Read more…] about An 1805 Visitor to the Springs in Ballston and Saratoga
Charles Annibale is well-known throughout the Southern Adirondacks and Saratoga region as the friendly, hardworking owner/operator of Clean and Clear Windows.
But there’s another whole side to this industrious dynamo — and it, too, involves glass! Over the past seven years, Annibale has earned a thriving reputation as a mosaic artist whose abstract masterpieces are made exclusively from fragments of glass rather than traditional mosaic tiles. [Read more…] about Artist Charles Annibale Creates Stunning Abstract Glass Mosaics
Although polished metal mirrors have been used since antiquity, it was not until the early 1800s in Germany that mass production of silvered glass mirrors came into being.
Scientist Justus vol Liebig (1803-1873) experimented with a wet deposition process which left a thin layer of metallic silver on panes of glass through the chemical reduction of silver nitrate. This eliminated the use of dangerous mercury coating used in such places as the Hall of Mirrors at Louis XIV’s palace of Versailles. [Read more…] about The Irona Glass Company of Clinton County, NY
The Redford Glass Company, in the town of Saranac, Clinton County, NY was in business for only 20 years (over 200 years ago) and produced products that demonstrated unique skilled craftsmanship that survive to this day. The Company, that was once famous and esteemed for its crown glass windowpanes, has become synonymous with unique and priceless glassware. [Read more…] about Redford Glass: Clinton County’s Unique, Priceless Glassware
Albert Rodmond Fox was born on February 10, 1810, and came of age during a dynamic period in American history, as the new nation found its footing. Fifty years after the Declaration of Independence there was a new generation of leaders. It was a time of internal improvements (infrastructure) – new roads, canals, railroads and, eventually, the telegraph – and the industrial revolution. Fortunes were made.
It was also a time of social reform: circuit-riding preachers; new schools and churches; missionaries of all sorts; temperance and abolition advocates. Albert Fox of Sand Lake, Rensselaer County, was in the middle of it all. [Read more…] about Rensselaer County Industrialist Albert Fox: A Short Bio
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