Art & Artifacts Record
Images
Metadata
Object Name |
Tumbler |
Collection |
Artifact collection |
Object ID |
M1988.54.1 |
Year Range from |
1860 |
Year Range to |
1900 |
Description |
Colorless blown glass tumbler with cut decoration, consisting of triangular and elaborate star patterns repeated along body and extending upwards from base and ending slightly below the rim. |
Place Names |
Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.) Greenpoint (New York, N.Y.) |
Subject Headings |
Factories Immigrant business enterprises |
Personal and Corporate Names |
Greenpoint Glass Works (Brooklyn, New York, N.Y.) |
Curatorial Notes |
When Brooklyn's waterfront economy took off in the early 1800s, glassmaking flourished. This highly decorated cut glass tumbler is attributed to the Greenpoint Glass Works, established in 1860 on Commercial Street in North Brooklyn by French immigrant Christian Dorflinger (1828-1915). While Dorflinger had founded other small glass factories around Brooklyn beginning a decade earlier, his Greenpoint Glass Works at the mouth of Newtown Creek marked the height of his success in Brooklyn. Greenpoint Glass Works quickly became renowned for their high quality blown, cut, and engraved glassware. In the 1860s, Mary Todd Lincoln even commissioned table settings from the company for the White House. Like other growing nineteenth-century manufacturing enterprises, glass work attracted new immigrants to Brooklyn searching for employment, and also relied heavily on children's labor throughout the glass manufacturing process. By 1902, the company had changed owners and was known as the Gleason-Tiebout Company. It remained in business until 1946, when operations moved out of Brooklyn into Queens County. |