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Naughty Nineties enamelled tumbler - Jeannette Glass Company
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This amusing, marigold tumbler stands a full five inches high, and has an unusual square base that’s just over an inch and a half across.
Made by the Jeanette Glass Company of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania*, this a scarce item with a distinctive enamelled design with an inscription (shown right) that clearly gives the name to the pattern! In fact the sobriquet, the “Naughty Nineties” (which refers to the 1890s decade and is also known as the Gay Nineties) wasn’t coined until the late 1920s, in a cartoon series of New York life created by R.V. Culter. In fact the 1890s weren’t particularly "naughty" at all (in fact they were unhappy times as there was a widespread economic depression). So the name, “Naughty Nineties” was a bit of a contradiction, in fact more wishful thinking than reality. Nevertheless, it provided food for musicals, plays, a film, newspaper cartoons (see the illustration shown here from 1949) and of course, this splendid tumbler from Jeannette. |
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Naughty Nineties by Jeannette
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* The city of Jeannette is in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania and it was founded in 1888, being named after the wife of one of the original city fathers.
Jeannette was known as "the glass city" because of the numerous glass plants founded in the general area, including McKee Glass Works, Fort Pitt Glass, the Pittsburgh Lamp, Brass and Glass Company, American-Saint Gobain, and Westmoreland Glass as well as Jeannette Glass Company itself. For many decades, the glassworks of the area supplied the country with everything from decorative and practical household items, to bottles and to milk glass, and even plate glass windows and car light lenses. (Source: Wikipedia).
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