Figured Flask

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Figured Flask

Manufacturer Kensington Glass Works American, 1816-1833

Place of OriginKensington, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

Date1824-1838

Dimensions8 3/16 in. (20.8 cm)

Mediumglass

ClassificationGlass

Credit LineGift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1917.358

Not on View

Collections

Glass

Published ReferencesBarber, Edwin AtLee, American Glassware, Old and New: A Sketch of the Glass Industry in the United States and Manual for Collectors of Historical Bottles, Philadelphia, Patterson and White, 1900, p. 41, no. 4.

McKearin, George S., and Helen McKearin, drawings by James L. McCreery, American Glass, New York, Crown, 1941; rev. ed., 1948; McKearin, Helen and Kenneth M. Wilson, American Bottles and Flasks and Their Ancestry, New York, Crown, 1978; etc., G.I-96, p. 530, no. 96.

Helen McKearin, Bottles, Flasks, and Dr. Dyott, New York, Crown, 1970, G.I-96, pp. 96-97, no. 8.

McKearin, Helen A., and Kenneth M. Wilson, American Bottles and Flasks and Their Ancestry, New York, Crown, 1978, G.I-96, pp. 547, 79-88, 413, fig. 117; pp. 455, 513-514, no. 11.

Wilson, Kenneth M., American Glass, 1760-1930: The Toledo Museum of Art, New York: Hudson Hills Press in association with the Toledo Museum of Art, [Lanham, Md.]: National Book Network [distributor], c1994; 2 v. (879 p.): ill. (some col.); 32 cm., 1994, p. 113, no. 44, colorpl. 44, p. 79.

Exhibition HistoryNew York World's Fair, 1939.Label TextThe portrait of Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) on this flask was based on a print after Jean-Antoine Houdon's bust of Franklin sculpted in 1778 (the Museum has a cast of this bust in Gallery 28A of the main building). On the reverse is a three-quarter profile bust of Thomas W. Dyott, M.D., proprietor of Kensington Glass Works. Dyott was a druggist and patent-medicine manufacturer who extended the use of traveling agents (salesmen), designed phials and bottles for his products (including figured flasks), and eventually owned and operated several glasshouses until his bankruptcy in 1838.