Old New England Glassware in the Home
Part Two
"OMG They are SO Annoying"
Glass
was precious:
In
old New England.
There
was none.
The
dates? 1500 to 1750’s. “Sort of” for this last. “Sort of” for the first too.
Ok
so there were Europeans and Englishmen ‘in’ New England before the
Pilgrims. They did not read and
write
Much.
This
(essay) is not about that. It is
about ‘old New England glassware in the home’. I am going to have to repeat this subject declaration over
and over to keep ‘on subject’. I
don’t care if that annoys the reader because having to do this annoys me. I am not re-writing the glass history
‘of’ New England. I am writing
about glassware in the old New England home. Understanding the actual subject I am pontificating about...
I have found... has to be ‘hammered home’. It is a specific subject. I have to ‘throw out’ a lot and then... throw out a lot of
what I throw out.
That
should make the Part One more clear.
Throwing out has a lot to do with glassware in the old New England
home. When treating this subject I
suggest one first throw out the ‘their glassware’. In their old New England home.
At
the least, that brings the reader to the ‘peeking at’ state of the beginning of
glassware in the old New England home that I stated above; ‘there was
none’. IF... by recycling... you
TOO ‘have none’ in YOUR old New England home... then you are at an ‘old New
England Glassware’ ground zero state TOO.
You have ‘cleaned up your workspace’ by throwing out.
TOO
CHICKEN TO DO THAT?
OK
soooo every time you open the ‘kitchen cupboard’ to ‘fetch off’ a ‘juice glass’
take a second or two to stare at the HELL of your glassware YOU have ‘hiding in
there’ and
Do
not call me up wanting me to ‘look at it’. I do not want to look at the dirty parts of your ...old New
England decorative arts... ‘body’.
“Yuck”
is the appraised value of you juice glass collection.
Or
maybe NOW we are at an old New England glassware ground zero?
“Getting
there.” you say?
Thank
you for your efforts to clean OUT this tawdry gathering of ‘glassware and you’
in ...the old New England home.
Returning: There was none (glassware in old New
England). Actually there was a
very small ‘some’. It was all
‘brought here’. On ships. From ‘there’. I not going to go into that. Just touch it a little.
Beads: “Indian trade (glass) beads”. One of the first glass imports into New
England. An ‘easy to understand’? Better be. So if you have some of those that, like, you ‘dug up’ in
your ‘garden’ and “like KEEP” ... you don’t have to recycle those. Yeah you can just put the little
handful on display in the now glassware free cupboard in the dining room. This isn’t about that (New England
Indian beads dug up in gardens).
That is a big and serious subject.
But.
Bottles: AT THE FIRST they were ‘chance’ imports
brought by personal vanity and... very quickly traded away for a gigantic
profit to ‘Indians’ who, having never ‘seen glass before’ let alone a bottle...
‘had to have one’. The tradition
of trade acquisition was soooo strong that the... best sites and best recorded
‘old New England’ seventeenth century “documented” “bottles” is ‘from (Indian)
burial sites’. Once they got one,
commonly, an ‘Indian’ was ‘buried with it’ (his/her bottle). There is a lot ‘of this’
‘written’. I am not writing about
this. I am writing about ‘old New
England glassware in the home’.
New England Indian burial found glass bottles are really ‘neat’...
though.
Very
quickly and to no surprise, ‘bottles’ were ‘imported’ ‘for trade’. Not too many; they were always
‘scarce’...
‘In
the home’. An ‘old New England
home’... might have had a... ‘one bottle for seven houses’ ratio until that
bottle was swapped for, well... corn.
To eat.
Broken
glass (from a bottle) was ‘kept’ and ‘used’ to ‘make tools’ like... knife
blades and, more often, ‘skin’ (hide) scrapping tools.
“Yuck”
and there was a lot of raw scrapped skin in Old New England homes. Windows, for example, were not ‘glass’
but were ‘raw scrapped hide’; skin scraped thin enough so that ‘light shines
through’
Pieces
of glass: Actual colonial windows
were very scarce. They were made,
stained glass window style, of fitted small pieces of glass held together with
‘lead’.
PIECES of ...looking glass (mirror
glass) were deeply coveted by both settlers and Native Americans. Looking glass was a very... very...
very popular trade item with the ladies of the... Continent of North America.
I
am not writing about that... in detail...: Looking glass IS a foundation glassware in an old New
England home. It is right next
to... and preferred to... ‘a bottle’.
“WINDOW GLASS” comes as a distant (very hard to procure) third
‘glassware’... in the old New England home unless... one has some ‘trade beads’
too. Then window glass is
‘fourth’. Most settlers only...
‘traded’... trade beads so they were ‘a glassware’ not found in... the... old
New England home.
Back
to the recycling. One did not
realize how much tawdry glass... and glassware one has in ‘the home’ these
days? HAD TO MAKE SEVERAL TRIPS
over a period of WEEKS to successfully ‘clean out’ all the junky glassware in
the home... in an epifocal... effort to ‘ground zero’ this... annoying ratio of
abundant bad taste... in the ‘your home’?
For
myself I: I ‘started with glass’
so young that I not only did not have any personal glassware like juice glasses
(I used ‘my mom’s’***). I also didn’t have ‘even’ ‘any glass’
ware. I mean... I was in seventh
grade when I started to get serious about MY GLASS. All the other kids thought I was weird to ‘care about
glass’? Not really. They just ‘didn’t care’. So, like, when we were on this boy
scout campout and we put our tent right on top of this old logging camp dump
filled with old bottles and I went berserk collecting all of them my friend
thought I was nuts until he started digging them up himself too and wouldn’t
stop
Either.
I
kept those in my bedroom. It was
‘glassware’: “old” glassware in an
old New England home. I added
‘stuff’ (other pieces of old glassware I found) to ‘that’. I always put the juice glass I used in
the sink like ‘my mom’ told me to.
I never thought a juice glass ‘was old’... ‘glass’.
So
I never had a ‘problem’ about ‘what old glass is’ and ‘how to tell that’. In fact I found that my understanding
of this metal (glass is a metal) very rapidly expanded allowing me to ...very
rapidly... distance myself from those who ‘don’t-know-glass’. Those people I found to be
‘annoying’. Even then they were
always showing me “glass” and asking me if it was “ANY GOOD” (old). It was annoying.
What
I also found ...hasn’t changed... but was a little disturbing at first. Ah... disturbing at first. What happened was that if someone
handed me a piece of glass like a drinking glass (‘juice glass’) I... ah...
looked at it; looked it over.
Ah... like... especially if I was soon to be expected to ‘use’ (drink
out of) it. Yeah... ‘not good’ and
became ‘disturbing’. I’m used to
it now. Still happens; the same
‘quality control aversion – diversion – “Ah... I don’t know about this” –
“Ah...”. I’m just better at it;
personal glassware awareness management.
You know; the ‘I’m gonna touch my lips to that’ factor(S) (note plural):
“Take
a look around.
“Here
it comes:
“Don’t
you want any?”
“No
thank you I’m fine”.
...
...
“Oh
my God. They are SO annoying!”
“Who's that dear?”
“Mrs.
Randolph and her sister said that.”
“About
who dear.”
“I
think it was about me... but I’m not really sure.
Actually
I was sure
That
it was not said about me.
She
/ her... and her sister Bing had
“Yes.”
Wrapped several “THE OLDER GLASS” ware in
Paper
towels from the kitchen including two “1930’s” hollow stem champagne glasses
ah...
Actually
those looked like late 1950’s to my eye and wasn’t she (the mother) a
War
Bride anyway. I mean like 1941 War
Bride so-and
Eve
was married ‘pretty young’ ‘too’ isn’t that right? Anyway
They
took that glassware in a paper shopping bag to the
Westchester
Glass Club’s annual show (and sale) in (old) Greenwich Connecticut held every
year (April-ish). The best glass
show in the nation it is always
‘Someone
saying that' at the least and that
Is the stinking truth.
They
(Eve and Bing) were showing and telling
Their
saga of... their... glassware in their old New England home?
Absolutely. To anyone who would listen. And they did listen until the first
champagne glass was withdrawn from the shopping bag and unwrapped from its
paper towel and
That
was the very abrupt end to that wholeness of antiquarian information questing
including the “their probably 1950’s at the oldest” ...brisk... summarial...
‘advice’.
That
led to the ...brisk... summarial... “Oh my God. They are SO annoying!”
Back
at me.
I
was not at Winter’s (‘Eve’s’)
home. I was at an antiques
show. They; Eve and Bing, want
something more from me?
“Of
course they do darling.”
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