It’s a shame for anyone to live in or leave South Jersey without some of this region’s colorful blown glass.
Southern New Jersey is, after all, the birthplace of the American glass industry. It all started in Upper Alloways, Salem County, around 1737, when Caspar Wistar, a German immigrant, opened the first commercially successful glass factory in the western hemisphere.
Because America was a colony, making fancy glass here was forbidden, and available only from England. Wistar’s factory could only produce utilitarian glass that would not be cost efficient to ship–bottles, windows, and scientific glass.
It wasn’t long, however, before those early colonial glassblowers, most of them German immigrants brought over by Wistar, began using their crude batches at the end of the day to make household items for themselves and their friends and neighbors.
They fashioned bottles into flasks, creamers, pitchers and bowls. They created whimsical items like glass canes, banks, paperweights, chains, batons and more. This started the South Jersey glass tradition of handmade end-of day glass that continued into the 20th Century.
By the 19th century, there were well over 100 glass factories in New Jersey, and blowing glass here survived all manner of pressed glass and bottle-making machinery.
The story is told that Allie Clevenger visited the Philadelphia Sesquicentennial Exhibition in 1926 celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, where he saw an exhibit of old South Jersey pieces and commented, “I can do that.”
The next year Allie and his brothers, Reno (Lorenzo) and Tom opened Clevenger Brothers Glass in Clayton (formerly Fislerville). Glassblowing was in their blood. Their father, William, blew window glass in Batsto and worked for Moore Brothers, where his sons worked as carry-boys.
The Clevenger brothers made all manner of free blown South Jersey-style glass, including pitchers, creamers, vases, and bowls, with colors that varied from batch to batch, applied handles and distinctive South Jersey features like “lily pad” bases.
When the Depression came in 1929, they soldiered on, providing work for some of the area’s most gifted glass gaffers, like August Hofbauer, Harry Robb, Vermont Frie and Otis Coleman, among others. By the early 1930s, they would add an extensive line of mold-blown pieces to their product line.
The Clevengers were successful because they connected this region with its proud history, and by making bright, interesting, handcrafted pieces at prices that anyone could afford, even during hard times.
Allie, the last of the Clevenger brothers, died in 1960. His wife, Myrtle, kept the business going until she sold it to Jim Travis in 1966. Before that, no Clevenger pieces were marked. They are only known by their distinctive style and rough pontil mark. After 1966, pieces were marked with a CB.
Find out more about South Jersey glass at various web sites, including www.oldsouthjerseyglass.com. The bible on the subject is Adeline Pepper’s classic, “The Glass Gaffers of New Jersey” (Scribner).
The book is out of print, but is available in the library as an in-house reference only. It cannot be checked out. Copies are often available on sites like www.abebooks.com, but they can be pricey.
Arthur Schwerdt is author of “The Antique Story Book” (www.amazon.com), and co-owner of The August Farmhouse Antiques on Route 9 in Swainton. Send your comments or appraisal requests with photo to aschwerdt@cmcherald.com.
