This blown glass bank is part of a small group of American blown glass objects incorporating coins, including banks, or “money boxes” as they were called in the nineteenth century, two-handled urns, or “loving cups,” and cream pitchers and covered sugar bowls, all of which have coins encased in their hollow stems and/or finials.
The present bank, which incorporates an 1850 United States silver half-dime in a hollow ball below the rooster finial, and an 1838 silver four-pence coin in the hollow stem, is almost identical to one published by George S. and Helen McKearin in their ground-breaking book, American Glass (New York: Crown Publishers, 1941), pl. 59 no. 5 and p. 163, which incorporates an 1837 half dime in the hollow ball of the stem and an 1840 half dime in the hollow ball of the finial. It is also similar to another bank published by the McKearins (pl. 59 no. 2 and p. 163; and their Two Hundred Years of American Blown Glass [Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1950], pp. 312–13 pl. 96 no. 2), which contains an 1851 gold dollar in the hollow ball at the top and another gold dollar of uncertain date in the stem, as well as an example reproduced as the frontispiece of Frank W. Chipman’s landmark book, The Romance of Old Sandwich Glass (Sandwich, Massachusetts: privately printed, 1932), which contains an 1831 dime below the rooster finial. Other banks of essentially the same canon of design but of varying form that also incorporate coins include one published by Raymond E. Barlow and Joan E. Kaiser, The Glass Industry in Sandwich, vol. III (Downingtown, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Publishing Ltd., for Barlow-Kaiser Publishing Co. Inc., 1987), p. 230 no. 3365, with 1844 and 1845 half dimes; three formerly in the renowned Elsholz collection (catalogue, sale, Richard A. Bourne Co. Inc., Hyannis, Massachusetts, December 9-10, 1986, The Elsholz Collection of Early American Glass, Sessions I & II, nos. 167, 169, and 170), one of which (no. 170), is very much like the one recorded by the McKearins (Two Hundred Years, pl. 96 no. 2) but at 6 1/2 in. high considerably smaller than the 11 1/4 and 11 1/2 in. heights of the banks they illustrated. It contains two 1833 half dimes. The other two Elsholz banks, much less elaborate in composition but certainly related to the others in style and presumably date, variously contain an 1841 half dime (no. 167) and an 1867 three-cent coin (no. 169).
Several two-handled clear glass urns fall within the same time frame. One formerly in the collection of Hirschl & Adler Galleries and since 2007 in the collection of the St. Louis Art Museum, Missouri (FAPG 19820D; photograph from Hirschl & Adler archives), incorporates an 1837 silver quarter, while a slightly larger example, again formerly in the collection of Hirschl & Adler Galleries and since 1985 in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum, California (see Wendy A. Cooper, Classical Taste in America 1800–1840, exhib. cat. [Baltimore, Maryland: The Baltimore Museum of Art, and New York: Abbeville Press, 1993], pp. 173, 174 fig. 130), contains an 1834 silver quarter.
The range of the dates of the various coins incorporated within these pieces from 1831 to 1867 would thus tend to establish the parameters of their fabrication.
Interestingly, the glass banks have traditionally been attributed to the Boston and Sandwich Glass Co., with offices in Boston, Massachusetts, and a manufactory at Sandwich, on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and the two-handled urns have been assigned to the New England Glass Co., at Cambridge, Massachusetts. For example, the McKearins (Two Hundred Years) record that the bank with the 1851 coin is “said to have been made as a presentation piece by one Joe Miller in 1851 of the Boston and Sandwich Glass Works.” And Barlow and Kaiser note that the bank with 1844 and 1845 coins “can be traced back to the family of James Lloyd, who was ‘the great genius in evolving formulae by colored glass at Sandwich’” (Walter E. Simmons, Personnel of the Boston and Sandwich Glass Factory [1963, n.p.]. Lura Woodside Watkins states that the two-handled urn she published was “peculiar to the New England factory [i.e., the New England Glass Co.]” and “was blown as a wedding present for George Dale, one of the ‘blowers’ at that glass works.” She further notes that “a smaller loving cup in the same style, made in 1837, is in the possession of Mr. Thomas Leighton, Jr., of Cambridge, Massachusetts,” a descendent of one of the early “blowers” at the New England Glass Co.”
The fact that only fewer than a dozen large-scale, compositionally fully developed banks have been recorded attests to their great rarity. The likely reason is that, to the extent they were actually used for the deposit of coins, they had to be broken in order to retrieve the coins, a lip on the inside of the coin slot preventing the coins from being released when the bank is turned upside down. A few of the known banks are cracked around the money slot, presumably mute evidence of an attempt to remove coins without destroying the entire bank.
In form, the present bank is closest to the two published by the McKearins in Two Hundred Years, one of these even encasing a coin of 1851. But the present bank incorporates additional ornamentation in the form of berry prunts on the casings of the two coins and on the bank itself like those on two very large banks (McKearin, American Glass, pl. 59 no. 3, and Barlow and Kaiser, vol. V, p. 64 no. 5114 illus.). The horizontally ribbed ornament on the tops of the four straps between the upper coin and the bank itself is also found on the similar bank published by the McKearins (pl. 96 no. 1) and the one illustrated by Chipman.