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Pairpoint Glass Company History

Pairpoint Corporation, New Bedford, Massachusetts (1894-1938)
Gundersen Glass Works, New Bedford, Massachusetts (1939-1957)
Pairpoint Glass Company, Sagamore, Massachusetts (1970 to the present). This listing of company names is actually a simplification of the complex history of this particular factory. Pairpoint's antecedents can be traced back to 1837 in South Boston, when Deming Jarves founded the Mount Washington Glass Works. William L. Libbey took control of this company in 1861 and in 1870 moved it to the vacant factory of the New Bedford Glass Company. Here it continued to operate until 1894 when it merged with the adjacent Pairpoint Manufacturing Company, a Britannia works that had been organized in 1880. Renamed the Pairpoint Corporation in 1900, the company excelled in the production of both cut glass and silver plated goods. In the 1920s and 1930s they turned to the production of colored glassware, art glass, and fine engravings. In later years, they also cut blanks from other companies, including Heisey, Duncan & Miller, and Fostoria. It was during these years that they began producing the pieces with balls incorporating controlled bubbles for which they are particularly well known today.

Although the company remained in operation throughout the 1930s, they were hard-hit by the Depression and in 1937 were sold to a salvage company. In 1939 they were sold in turn to a group of investors and renamed the Gundersen Glass Works. Robert Gundersen, a former employee of Pairpoint, became the manager. At his death in 1952, the company became part of the National Pairpoint Company and was renamed the Gundersen-Pairpoint Glass Works. After 90 years of continuous operation, the aging factory was closed in 1957. But that was still not the end. Robert Bryden, who had been the final manager of the company, briefly established the Pairpoint Glass Company in East Wareham, Massachusetts, and then moved to Europe, where he leased facilities in Spain and worked on a free-lance basis elsewhere from 1958-1970. In 1970, he came back to Sagamore, Massachusetts, the present location of the factory. (An announcement in 1979 that the company was about to return to New Bedford, appears not to have come about.)

In 1988, the company was purchased by Robert and June Bancroft. In recent years it has been known as the Pairpoint Crystal Company and currently operates as the Pairpoint GlassWorks. They produce a large variety of glassware, with a special emphasis on museum reproductions for the Sandwich Glass Museum, the Winterthur Museum, and others. Both blown and pressed ware are among their current output.

? Adapted from The Glass Candlestick Book, volume 3, by Tom Felt, Rich & Elaine Stoer (reprinted with permission)

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Date:	29.04.2007 20:30
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Added by:	Tom Felt