Amelung Glass

18th century European glass blower. Illustration by Richard Stimley, Courtesy of The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY.

In 1784, Germany witnessed the departure of dozens of experienced glass artists and craftsmen, who came to Frederick County with John Frederick Amelung. Amelung was a dreamer. He carried letters of introduction from Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, among others, and here, near present day Urbana, he built America’s premier domestic glassmaking facility. The New Bremen Glass Manufactory was a self-contained community of up to 500 residents that produced the finest American glass of the 18th century. This early manufacturing effort was part of a larger development from colonial dependence on England to economic independence for the young nation. A joint archeological excavation of the site by the Corning Museum of Glass and the Smithsonian Museum of History and Technology uncovered “a spectacularly large and well-equipped factory structure,” but insufficient investigations since have left many unanswered questions. Most of the surviving glass made at his factory can be found today in leading museums and historical societies.

The Amelung glasshouse at the New Bremen Glass Manufactory near present day Urbana in Frederick County, Maryland as excavated in 1962-63 by the Corning Museum of Glass and the Smithsonian Institution, under the direction of Mr. Ivor Noel Hume, Chief Archeologist of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.1

Frederick was perhaps the leading glass manufacturing center for the young nation during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Glass was actually blown at five different locations at various times across Frederick County. J.F. Amelung just managed the largest and most ambitious factory that operated during this period, but others included one erected in 1793 by Thomas Johnson, Maryland’s first governor on Tuscorora Creek just north of Frederick city. Frederick must have been synonymous with glass-making at that time.

This sugar bowl was free-blown in pale aquamarine glass with a finial of four projecting leaves with a swan, made at the New Bremen Glass Manufactory between 1785 and 1795. 1	This bottle is believed to have been made in Frederick County 1783-1810.

One local history buff, Larry Jessen, believes this famous “jug,” which dates to the construction of the stone bridge over the Monocacy in 1808, was built in honor of Frederick’s identity as a glass-making center. The Irish stonemason followed the design of our locally produced bottles. These bottles were hand blown and were used as containers to hold and transport liquor, molasses, and other non-corrosive liquids. Frederick glassmakers produced them by the thousands in various sizes. This stone bottle is one of Frederick’s earliest works of public art. It carries inscriptions honoring British General Edward Braddock and the Marquis de Lafayette, the famous French General , who aided George Washington during the Revolution, and who later was reunited with several of his former
comrades in arms on this bridge. The bridge lasted
until March 3, 1942, when it suddenly collapsed.

An old legend declares that the Irish mason enclosed a jug of Irish whisky inside the sculpture – a bottle within a bottle.

1. Courtesy the Winterthur Museum, Winterthur, Delaware. Museum purchase with funds provided by Henry Francis du Pont.