|
|
Joyce's Search Tip - November 2008
 |
Do You Know that you can search just the
articles on the site by using the Articles button in the Partitioned
search engine at the bottom of the Current
What's New Page? |
|
|
Food canning works by creating enough heat to kill all organisms and
enzymes that could spoil food and sealing out any new ones from entering.
The earliest home canning involved a glass jar with a tin lid and sealing
wax. The parts were not re-useable because the sealing wax acted a bit
like cement. Even so it was a step forward from earlier preserving methods
of drying, pickling, salting and smoking and offered a way to preserve
a greater variety of the summer’s harvest.
In 1858 tinsmith John L. Mason developed a way to cut threads into a
metal lid. Mason paired the threaded and gasketed lid with a matching threaded
glass jar that was re-useable. Home canning became a new sensation. This
Mason jar design was in use for decades. You will still find them commonly
in antique stores. If you see 1858 on the Mason jar, that is the patent
date and not the date of the jar’s manufacture.
The Lightning jar was invented in 1882. This is the familiar jar with
both glass top and container and the wire clamp to hold the top on. The
jar rubber was the sealing element. This was a common model until the 1960s,
and some are still in use.
In 1915 Alexander H. Kerr, whose company was founded in 1903, developed
the glass jar with a gasketed flat metal lid held in place until sealed
with a threaded metal ring. This model is still in almost universal use
today.
The Ball brothers were container manufacturers who switched to glass
jars in 1883. This is the name that dominates the home canning industry
to the present day. Ball had bought out many smaller producers over
the decades. The Ball Corporation no longer makes canning products. Kerr,
Golden Harvest, Bernardin and Ball brands are presently all manufactured
by Alltrista Corporation.
Before company consolidations reduced the variety of canning jar brands,
hundreds of smaller companies made their own versions of the canning jar
types mentioned above. Older jars come in all sizes, shapes, colors and
prices. I recently managed to dig out a couple of Drey brand jars from
several boxes of used mixed contemporary jars and purchased them for a
quarter each. They often are offered for $10 to $15 each if sorted by dealers
first.
Canadian brands often have a crown on them, and there are several brands
of those. There are square ones and amethyst or amber ones, and red ones
– for budgets much larger than mine will ever be. Even as recently as 2002-2004,
Ball brand put out some lovely jelly jars in a Collector’s Series. These
are no longer available and already go for very inflated prices on ebay
or specialty stores that kept an inventory of them.
If you keep your eyes open and get lucky you can build an interesting
collection of canning jars for modest prices. Or, if you have money to
spare, you can spend as much as $2000 on rare ones that I have seen listed
in the price book. The diversity you find will surprise you.
|
