Glass canning jars, also known as fruit jars or mason jars (although the latter is, strictly speaking, a misnomer) have been around since the early 1850s and today are eagerly sought after by collectors. There is a section on Ebay devoted to the sale of antique fruit jars, some of which have sold for as high as $30,000.
The earliest glass jars were called wax sealers because they used sealing wax which was poured into a channel around the lip which held on a tin lid. This process was complicated and error-prone, but was largely the only one available for a long time and widely used even into the early 1900s.
By far, though, the most popular form of seal was the screw-on zinc cap, the precursor to today's screw-on lids. The earliest successful application of this was discovered by John Landis Mason and patented on November 30, 1858, a date that is embedded in collectors' collective subconcious because it is embossed on thousands of jars. Jars with "Patent Nov 30th 1858" were made in many shapes sizes and colors well into the 1900s. They range in price from a few dollars to many thousands of dollars. Since they were made in such quantity and used for such long periods, many of them have survived to the current day, and the vast majority of them are sold for less than $10 despite often being over 100 years old.
Another popular closure is known to collectors as the lightning closure , named after the first jar to use it which was embossed with "Lightning" on the side. More commonly, this is often known as a "bail" closure and consists of a metal wire which leverages a glass lid down when pressed against the side of the jar.
The heyday for jars was probably 1860-1900 when an explosion of patents for various closures were issued, ranging from the effective to the absurd. The more absurd closures were quickly abandoned and often fetch high prices in today's market.
Often, though, the thing that jar collectors most often look for is great color in a jar. 99% of all jars are in some shade of aqua or clear so these are not normally sought after colors (although there are a few exceptions). More rarely, jars will turn up in amber and occasionally in darker shades of green. Rarer still are cobalt blues, blacks and milk glass jars, and there is no known existence of any deep red antique jar. However, rare jars still pop up out of the woodwork. Just recently a collectioner acquired a cobalt blue jar that had been the subject of rumors for a long time but never seen before.
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Last updated: 10-25-2005 18:02:49
