Compote

Maker: New England Glass Company (Cambridge, MA; 1808-1888)
Material: Flint Glass
Year: ca. 1850
Size: Height 7.75”
2014.03.10 a-b The Mr. and Mrs. Franck H. Kaiser, Sr. Collection

Decorative pieces such as these flint glass compotes were designed to impress by augmenting a well set table. Multiple facets and crevices designed into such pieces reflected light, a necessary factor before the advent of electricity. Fruit was still being served a course in formal dinners. These compotes would be filled with fruit, either unpeeled or cut up and served as wet compote that would be passed during the fruit course.

This pattern was called “Sharp Diamond” pattern by the New England Glass Company. It was intended to be an imitation of diamond point cutting. [1] The bowl is identical to a known New England piece and the stem is identical to stems on other patterns from the ca. 1869 New England Glass Company catalog. [2] The press bowl and the press stem are attached by a glass wafer. The New England Glass Company was incorporated in 1818 in East Cambridge, Massachusetts and continued till 1888 when the company moved to Toledo, Ohio and changed names to W. L. Libbey & Son Co. MB & JT

[1, 2] Watkins, Lura Woodside, Cambridge Glass: 1818 to 1888, Bramhall House, New York, 1930.