Water Pitcher

Art Historical Context

This graceful **Water Pitcher** frominor, Taylor and Company1870–90) the Victorian era's blend of functionality and ornamentation in American homes. Crafted from pressed purple marble glass, stands 8¾ inches tall with a ½-inch diameter, its swirling, mottled purple surface elegantly imitating the veining of natural marble. Donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art's American Wing in 1946 by Mrs. Emily Winthrop, it showcases the firm's skill in industrial glass production. Pressed glass, a hallmark of 19th-century innovation, allowed for mass-manufactured yet decorative items using molds to shape molten glass under pressure. The purple hue, likely from manganese impurities that intensify with light exposure, added a jewel-like allure popular in post-Civil War America, where a rising middle class sought affordable luxury for dining tables. As a quintessential piece of American material culture, this pitcher reflects the era's domestic refinement, bridging British manufacturing techniques with U.S. tastes. Visitors can appreciate how such everyday objects elevated daily life into art.

About the Artist

Challinor, Taylor and Company · 1866–1891

Challinor, Taylor and Company was an American pressed glass manufacturer founded in 1866 and based in Tarentum, Pennsylvania, a community along the Allegheny River that was home to several of the nineteenth century's most innovative glassmakers. The firm operated until 1891, when it was absorbed into the United States Glass Company as Factory C — part of the great industrial consolidation that res...