This is Part 6 of an eight-part guide on opalescent vases made by the Jefferson Glass Company.  The patterns shown here include Jefferson's Single Lily Spool and Twisted Rope.  This guide was made possible by the many E-Bayers who have contributed photographs to this project.  Please leave feedback by clicking the button at the bottom of the page.  Sellers should feel free to link listings to this guide.

ID Guide to
Jefferson Opalescent Vases, Part 6:
Jack-in-the Pulpit Vases

by curculiosglass

  

A Jefferson Single Lily Spool vase,
with an illustration from a November, 1901
advertisement in China, Glass & Pottery Review 

right photo courtesy of starrfir1

INTRODUCTION

          Part 1 of this guide provides a short history of the Jefferson Glass Company of Steubenville, Ohio, a firm that specialized in the making of opalescent glass from 1901-1906.  Ten of Jefferson's conventionally-shaped vases are shown in Parts 1-4 of this guide.  Part 5 features footed and novelty vases; Part 7 striped vases; and Part 8 bulbous vases.  

         This section of our guide, Part 6, focuses on Jefferson's Jack-in-the-pulpit vases:  Single Lily Spool and Twisted Rope.  "Floriform" or flower-shaped vases were in fashion throughout the Art Nouveau era (1880-1914), when they became highly popular in Tiffany glassware.  Jack-in-the-pulpit vases imitate the shape of the woodland flower by the same name and come in many styles, with oval, circular or peaked mouths, some dramatically splayed and others with more subtley flared rims.

Photographic Gallery of Vases
             

A November, 1901 Jefferson ad
placed in China, Glass & Pottery Review

Single Lily Spool vase.   In May, 1901, the trade journal China, Glass & Pottery Review announced that Jefferson's "water lily vase, in three colors, with wrought-iron foot, is an immense 'ten-center'.  Buyers should get in touch with this young firm, for they can save money on the line they have been importing."  This review must have been good news to the fledgling company Jefferson, which had opened only a year before:  Jefferson's proclaimed goal was to spare American buyers import prices by producing "fine glass" like that being manufactured in Europe. 

Six months later, when Jefferson ran the above-shown advertisement in China, Glass & Pottery Review, the company included a picture of the Single Lily Spool vase to represent Jefferson's wares.  The ad's fine print lists Jefferson's wide range of products including "Novelties in Opalescent Colors" and "Opalescent and Decorated Vases".   The two illustrations in the ad depict two floriform variations of Jefferson's Single Lily Spool vases.  These two variations are also shown below; one has a Jack-in-the-Pulpit top, and the other a flattened mouth: 

A Single Lily Spool vase with a Jack-in the Pulpit mouth (left and center)
and a variation featuring a flattened mouth (right) 

photos by starrfir1 (left and center) and curculiosglass (right)

Single Lily Spool vases are decorated with an interesting feature:  a series of fine lines ring the vase body in a design imitative of thread wrapped around a spool, beginning near the foot of the vase and stopping just short of the rim.  Jefferson also used this design on a larger vase pattern known as "Jefferson Spool," which is shown in Part 5 of this guide. 

    

Threading on a blown-glass Tiffany vase (top left);
thread pattern on a Jefferson Spool vase (bottom left);
and thread pattern on Single Lily Spool vase (right).

photo by curculiosglass

To achieve its spool-design effect, Jefferson created molds impressed with the spool pattern, which imitated a blown-glass technique known as "threading," popular on Victorian glass in the last decades of the 1800's.  The Corning Museum of Glass defines "threading" as "the process of winding a thin trail of glass around an object to create the appearance of parallel lines".  In 1876, W.J. Hodgetts of Stourbridge, England, patented a machine that wound closely-spaced glass threads at even intervals around a vase.  An example of such threading on a Tiffany vase is shown above beside two detail photos of Jefferson's Lily Spool and Spool vases. 

Jefferson's Single Lily Spool vases are referenced in the fifth edition of the  Standard Encyclopedia of Opalescent Glass, at p. 140.  (Unfortunately, this pattern did not appear in the SEOG's sixth edition.)  The Jefferson 1901 trade journal ad's announcement quoted above offers the vases in "three colors," but the SEOG's fifth edition reports that the vases were made in four:  blue, green, white and canary (p. 259).  We have yet to see them in green.  The vases are generally hard to find, and appear most often white and blue opalescent.  Canary opalescent vases are rare; the one shown at the top of this guide appeared on E-Bay in January 2009.  A second canary opalescent example surfaced on E-bay in July, 2009.

Single Lily Spool vases are 6" high, and terminate in a notched base made to fit into a metal holder.  Metal holders for vases vary:  two kinds are shown in the photos higher up on this page.  The holder shown at page top is identical to the holder featured in the original 1901 Jefferson advertisement.  The pretty winged holder under the blue Jack-in-the-Pulpit vase above seems to reflect the influence of later Art Deco design of the 1920's.  According to the SEOG, 5th ed., the winged holder has been found in conjunction with a variety of vases from different companies (p. 140). 

A rare blue opalescent Twisted Rope vase,
with an illustration from a Jefferson Glass Co. advertisement
placed in the August, 1901 China, Glass & Pottery Review

photo (left) by David A. Peterson, all rights reserved

Twisted Rope.  We include this elegant and rare vase here, because we believe that it is a Jefferson invention, although until now the vase's origins have been unknown.  The 7 5/8" Twisted Rope vase shown above features a slender body that tapers toward a flattened ball stem with a foot measuring 3" in diameter.  A raised glass thread winds counter-clockwise from the bottom to the rim, which has a distinctive round mouth with the back of the rim pulled up into peak. The surface of the glass between the threads is stippled, and opalescence is concentrated at the top of the vase and the vase mouth. Twisted Rope vases were first brought to the attention of collectors by David A. Peterson, author of Vaseline Glass:  from Canary to Contemporary.  

According to Peterson, prior to March, 2008, only six documented examples of the vase were known to exist:  two in vaseline opalescent, two in blue opalescent and two in clear-to-white opalescent. One also had been reported in cranberry (non-opalescent) glass.  The green example shown below was discovered by E-Bayer unclechamps and sold on E-Bay on March 9, 2008 for $335.  This is the first green Twisted Rope vase to be documented: 

A recent E-Bay discovery:  the sole documented
example of a green Twisted Rope vase

photos courtesy of unclechamps

Our research has led us to conclude that that Jefferson Glass is the maker of Twisted Rope vases.  The vase's Jack-in-the-pulpit mouth with one pulled up peak is very similar to that of Jefferson's 1901 Single Lily Spool vase shown higher up in this guide.  In addition, Twisted Rope vases closely resemble the vase depicted in an August, 1901 Jefferson advertisement from China, Glass & Pottery Review; a detail from this ad is shown at the top of this section, and the ad is shown in its entirety below.  Although the ad illustration omits the "twisted rope" threading, the vase depicted has the same unusual mouth pulled up into a peak found on Twisted Rope vases, the same flattened ball stem and a a nearly identical general design. Since the vase illustration is a fairly small-sized element of the ad, it may well be that the illustrator opted to simplify the illustration and omit details such as the threading in depicting the vase:

Jefferson Glass advertisement
from the August, 1901 China, Glass & Pottery Review

Peterson has long speculated that Twisted Rope vases are are a Jefferson product.  He has noted that Jefferson made both cranberry and opalescent glass in the same 1902-1905 period -- which might explain why the vases have been sighted in both opalescent and cranberry glass.  In addition, Peterson has noted that  the two known blue Twisted Rope vases are the distinctive blue of Jefferson's opalescent glass, and that the known vaseline examples are a shade of yellow typical of Jefferson's canary opalescent glass.  A canary-opalescent vase from the collection of David A. Peterson is shown below.

A rare canary opalescent Twisted Rope vase
photo by David A. Peterson, all rights reserved

Twisted Rope vases were featured in the fifth edition of the Standard Encyclopedia of Opalescent Glass, at p. 164.  That edition reported that only three vases in the pattern had been documented.  Following the posting of this E-Bay guide, the newest edition of the SEOG (the sixth, published in 2009) reported the green vase shown here. Supplied with information from Dave Peterson, the SEOG, 6th ed., p. 155, noted that known opalescent-glass examples now include 2 in vaseline, 3 in blue and 2 in white, as well as the green vase shown above. 

Additional note:  In November, 2008, following the printing of the SEOG's sixth edition, a vaseline-opalescent Twisted Rope vase was offered on E-Bay by ebayer yourladyliberty:  this now sets the total of documented vaseline opalescent Twisted Rope vases known at 3.  We welcome information from E-Bayers who might offer any other evidence linking these vases to Jefferson, and we would be interested in learning about any additional sightings of Twisted Rope vases. 

Click here to continue on to this guide's Part 7, which features Jefferson's Stripe vases.

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Jefferson Vase Guide Table of Contents

   Introduction
       Conventionally-shaped Vases
    Conventionally-shaped Ribbed Vases
Whimsey Vases
 Novelty Vases
   Jack-in-the-pulpit Vases
Striped Vases
Bulbous Vases

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          Many thanks to E-Bayers   starrfir1, mrvaselineglass  and  unclechamps  for  generously contributing photographs to this guide.  Special thanks to author  David A. Peterson  for information.  Rights to all photos belong to the photographers, and pictures should not be used without their permission.  Text is (c) 2008, 2009 curculiosglass, all rights reserved.  To locate any E-Bay seller mentioned here,  just click on "Site Map" at the bottom of your E-Bay screen, and then click on "Feedback Forum" at the right top corner of the large menu that pops up.  Type or copy the seller's name into the Feedback Forum's search blank.

PLEASE LEAVE FEEDBACK ON THIS GUIDE BY PRESSING THE BUTTON BELOW.   To read our other guides on carnival and opalescent vases, click on  GUIDE INDEX.