Heisey Glass Company: advertisement and portions of stemware recovered from CHAP 2015.

August H. Heisey, born in Germany in 1842, immigrated to the United States in 1843, setting up home in Pennsylvania. In 1861, Heisey got into the glass business working as a clerk for King Glass Company in Pittsburgh. After fighting for the Union side in the Civil War, Heisey joined Ripley Glas Company as a salesman; in 1870 Heisey married Susan Duncan, daughter of the George Duncan, owner of Ripley. After George Duncan’s 1877 death, the company was left to Heisey and James Duncan (George’s son). Fourteen years later, the company (renamed George Duncan & Sons) became a part of U.S. Glass. In 1895, Heisey began construction on his own glass factory in Newark, Ohio; the plant opened in 1896. This fine-cut glassware was sold worldwide, often to bars and hotels, like the stemware found at the Charnley-Persky House in 2015 (pictured below). Heisey began registering trademarks at the turn of the century, particularly the well-known “H within a diamond” in 1901, as seen on the stemware pictured below. Heisey advertised nationally as early as 1910 with large, full-page spreads like the one below. August Heisey died in 1922, leaving the company to his son, E. Wilson Heisey. In the 1920s and 1930s, the company expanded in colored glass, and then into figurines in the next two decades. The company closed for the 1957 holiday season and never reopened. RRH

Rebecca S. Graff (photograph)

Rebecca S. Graff (photograph)
Public Domain (advertisement

Heisey Glassare: The Early Years: 1896-1924. Krause Publications. 2011. (advertisement)