LATEST COLLECTIBLES ARTICLE______________________________

America's First Fine Tableware
by Bob Brooke

Prior to the American Revolution, the colonists, those who could afford it, imported all their fine tableware from England and France. But after the war, German immigrant Henry Stiegel changed all that.

Heinrich Wilhelm Stiegel, nicknamed "Baron Stiegel,” was born in Cologne. Germany, on May 3,1729, the eldest of six children born to John Frederick and Dorothea Elizabeth Stiegel. He immigrated to the America in 1750 with his widowed mother and younger brother, Anthony, since his father and other siblings had died. They arrived in Philadelphia on August 31, 1750.

After arriving, Stiegel took a job as a clerk with Charles and Alexander Stedman. In 1752, he moved to Shaefferstown, near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where many German immigrants were living. There he got a job as an ironworker with Jacob Huber at his foundry. Soon after, he married Huber’s daughter, Elizabeth.

In 1758, after Huber’s death, Stiegel took over the foundry, rebuilt and renamed it Elizabeth Furnace, after his wife. He later purchased another forge that made cast-iron stoves in Berks County called the Tulpehocken Eisenhammer, which he called Charming Forge. In 1760, he Americanized his name to Henry William Stiegel.

With profits from his iron furnaces, Stiegel established a small glassworks at Elizabeth Furnace and began producing bottles and window glass in September,1763. He hired European glassblowers, including some from Venice and paid for their transportation to Pennsylvania.

Although Stiegel wasn’t a practical glassmaker, he was very successful in emulating the various types of English glass in demand in America at the time, as well as the common engraved and enameled Germanic wares with which his fellow Pennsylvania Germans had been familiar in their homeland. With a few exceptions, it’s impossible to distinguish between products which may have been made in one of his glasshouses and those produced in England or on the Continent during this time.

Stiegel also imported glass-blowers and enamelers from Germany and glass-blowers from the Bristol, England. Because he closely controlled the output of his workmen, the products from Stiegel's factories were far less individual in character than other glassmakers. He employed pattern-molding as a decorative technique in his glasshouses.

Nearly two years later he started another glass factory in Mannheim. Operations had barely started when the pre-Revolutionary depression imposed formidable obstacles. Blinded to the ominous signs of the times by his enthusiasm for his new enterprises, Stiegel pushed ahead heedlessly. The capacity of the first glasshouse didn’t satisfy him, so he built a second, larger one, and added to his staff the most expert workers he could find from England and the Continent. Late in 1769 or early in 1770 the second glasshouse went into operation, and it was here that he produced most of his finest pieces.

Stiegel began building a third glass factory, also located in Mannheim, in 1768, which he completed in 1769. Stiegel's advertisements referred to the firm as the American Flint Glass Manufactory. Here he produced colorless and colored flint glass and fine tableware of many varieties, including engraved and enameled glasses. This was the first glasshouse in America to specialize in the production of tableware, which emulated both English and Continental pieces.

This factory was the first to make lead glass in America. The lead glass of this time, commonly known as crystal because it was colorless and transparent, was typically used for fine tableware. Stiegel had retail outlets for his glass at various locations in the Colonies. However, he expanded too fast and ended production in 1774.

Though many of his pattern-molded glasses cannot be distinguished from their counterparts in England or Europe, pocket-bottles, which were once found largely in Pennsylvania bearing a diamond daisy or a daisy in hexagonal pattern, appear to have no European counterparts or prototypes. They were probably made in his second Mannheim factory between 1769 and 1774. With these exceptions, it’s impossible to distinguish Stiegel's products, but it’s known from his advertisements and his account books that his factories produced a wide range of tableware and other glass.

Some of Stiegel’s products included quart molded decanters, pint and half pint decanters, quart, pint, half pint and gill and half gill tumblers, wine and water glasses, wine and beer glasses, quart, pint and half pint mugs, bowls, specie bottles, half pint cans, cream jugs, smelling salts bottles, vinegar cuets, sugar boxes with covers, chain salts, mustard pots, pocket bottles, jelly, sillabub and free mason glasses, phials of all ports, candlesticks, fine wine glasses, common tail wine glasses, and toys of all sorts. The chain salts, sugar boxes with covers, and cream jugs were exactly the same as their English glass counterparts.

Some of the tumblers and mugs produced were sketchily engraved with floral and geometric designs in what’s referred to today as peasant or folk motifs. Because such glasses were widely produced in Europe, those made by Stiegel are referred to as “Stiegel-type” glasses rather than Stiegel glasses, because of the uncertainty of their origin.

The same can be said for said for enameled glasses which Stiegel began producing in 1772, undoubtedly to supply the local Pennsylvania German market. They closely imitated the same type of enameled peasant glass with which these people had been familiar in Germany. About a dozen enameled tumblers bearing English inscriptions with a Germanic flavor exist. The tumblers express sentiments, such as : `We Two will he True', and `My Love you like me do. While these glasses, too, may have been made in Europe for the American market, they’re likely to have been enameled in Stiegel's factory.

Unfortunately Stiegel’s contemporaries judged him a failure and an object of scorn. But his failure was his crowning success. Unless he had kept on in the face of all obstacles, he would probably never have produced his best glass.

At the time of his business’ failure on May 5, 1774, Stiegel listed unsold glass with dealers or agents in York, Hanover and Carlisle, as well as Mannheim in Pennsylvania, Hagerstown, Fredericktown and Baltimore in Maryland, and New York City. He probably also sent some glass to the West Indies. A judge ordered the bankrupt Stiegel to debtors' prison in the autumn of 1774, but he gained release by Christmas. He died at Charming Forge on January 10,1785.

< Back to Collectibles Archives