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Maker(s):Cains, Thomas
Culture:American (1779-1865)
Title:lamp
Date Made:1819-1830
Type:Lighting
Materials:lead glass; base metal: brass
Place Made:United States; Massachusetts; Suffolk county: Boston
Accession Number:  HD 2016.4
Credit Line:Hall and Kate Peterson Fund for Minor Antiques
Museum Collection:  Historic Deerfield
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Description:
Bristol immigrant Thomas Cains had a significant impact on the development of the New England glass industry in the early years of the 19th century. In 1812 Thomas Cains (1779-1865) immigrated to South Boston from the Phoenix Glass Works in Bristol, England to work at the new window glass factory of the Boston Glass Manufactory. Finding the works largely inactive due to the effects of the British blockade, Cains persuaded the owners to let him set up a small six-pot furnace for the production of tableware and other articles in flint glass. This was the first furnace of its kind in New England. For this reason Cains is celebrated as the father of the New England flint glass industry. About 1820 Cains established his own factory in South Boston, which he named the Phoenix Glass Works after his former workplace in England. The factory continued operation until about 1870. Thomas Cains' glass objects are attributed on the basis of the "Bishop's Mug" which descended in the Cains Family - a large flint glass mug with mercurial ring and the chain decoration, located at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This glass oil lamp with its original burner has both chain decoration and a mercurial ring in the font. Tall, colorless lead glass, blown oil lamp, round, globular font with a hole or aperture in the top for the insertion of an oil burner, the font is decorated with a mercurial ring - a glassblower creates a dent in the side of the glass and folds the glass over to trap a long air bubble, under the font is a large diameter wafer of glass, characteristic of South Boston production, then a hollow vase-shaped stem, the stem is decorated by two heavy parallel threads pinched into links or a chain aorund the outside of the stem, the stem is attached to a square pressed base with 27 serrated ribs on the interior, or a so-called lemon squeezer foot - this foot represents the earliest American method of glass pressing, pontil mark on the inside of base, condition: there are chips to the base, one large chip on the corner. Similar examples of these lamps are owned by the New Bedford Museum of Glass and the Corning Museum of Glass.

Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2016.4

Research on objects in the collections, including provenance, is ongoing and may be incomplete. If you have additional information or would like to learn more about a particular object, please email fc-museums-web@fivecolleges.edu.

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