Mason’s Improved Jar – Australian

Mason’s IMPROVED Jar

Australian

Pint

Dark Emerald Green

Provenance: Jerry McCann Collection

You are looking at a pint Mason’s Improved jar in a beautiful dark emerald green glass color. Look at all the seed bubbles and glass character contrasting with the raw tin screw cap. Just a marvelous example that is unique in jar collecting. It was produced with more glass than usual and is thought to have been made in Australia under license from the United States. We see this green color and heavy glass with other Australian bottles like Dr. Townsend’s Sarsaparilla.

This jar ranks among the most desirable of all collectible fruit jars, and is a superb example. The last intact example placed up for auction was 15 years ago, when Alex Kerr’s example was sold. These come up so seldom that its possible another opportunity to add one of these rarities to your collection might not occur again for decades.

Greg Spurgeon – North American Glass

The Ball Bros. Glass Manufacturing Company made most of the very latest of the machine-made type jars. Many other variations of the basic jar, with changes in the exact raised embossed wording, were made in ensuing years. For example, the “Mason’s Improved” jar or “Mason Jar” is now a generic term, meaning any jar used for canning which has a screw-type lid. Some of these Ball and Mason jars would easily become the most popular and commonly produced fruit jar of the 20th century in the United States and abroad.

We have other Mason jar varieties in our museum that give a pretty good history of the jar. Please see our Mason’s Patent Nov. 30th 1858 Jar and Mason’s Patent Crowleytown Jar and Mason’s GCCo. Patent Nov. 30th 1858 Jar and Mason’s Patent Nov. 30th 1858 CFJCo Jar

Support: Reference to Red Book #11, the Collector’s Guide to Old Fruit Jars by Douglas M. Leybourne, Jr.