Jeannette Glass mark

How to read it

The Jeannette Glass Company was organised in June 1898 out of earlier, short-lived bottle firms in the town of Jeannette (Bill Lockhart and colleagues, Society for Historical Archaeology). It made bottles, then glass prisms, auto headlights and tableware, and from 1924 only tableware. Glen and Stephen Thistlewood, who write on carnival glass, count Jeannette among the major makers of Depression-era carnival glass, machine-made rather than pressed and finished by hand, and say its table glass was very occasionally marked: with a J in a triangle early on and a J in a square later.

Also searched as: box j mark, jeanette glass, jeannette glass, j in a square glass mark, j in a triangle glass mark.

The J in a square

Jeannette registered the J in a square, which the SHA researchers call the Box-J, on 4 March 1941, claiming first use on 28 March 1940, according to the editors of Dick Roller’s fruit jar reference. It is on the Jeannette Mason Home Packer jar, below the word Jeannette, and has been reported on a pressed bowl. Older books dated it differently: Julian Toulouse to about 1915 to 1922, and Pullin to the whole life of the firm.

Whose J in a triangle?

The triangle is disputed. Pullin (1986) gives it to the D. C. Jenkins Glass Co. of Kokomo, Indiana, which she called a 1920s maker of Depression glass; two other sources give it to Jeannette, and one researcher saw it on a restaurant creamer he attributed to Jeannette. The SHA researchers suspect all of these attributions come from matching the J to a company name, and they say the mark was little used. The Thistlewoods treat it as Jeannette’s early mark.

A J in a goblet

Pullin also drew a goblet with a J in its bowl as a Jeannette mark. The SHA researchers think it was probably used only on tableware.

The end of the company

Maurice L. Stonehill bought Jeannette in 1960; the next year it bought the McKee division of the Thatcher Glass Manufacturing Co. in Jeannette, and in 1970 it became the Jeannette Corporation. The factory closed in 1983. The founding date differs slightly between accounts: 20 June 1898 in the SHA history, 14 June 1898 in Glassian’s history of the company.