Bird cage feeder. Blue transparent glass; mold-blown, applied and ground. Fountain has cylindrical ribbed body which widens at center and narrows to applied twist handle. Fountain has circular hole on side.

Glass seed boxes and fountains for birdcages are relatively rare because few households were able to afford birds as pets in the early 19th century. The Museum has two seed boxes in addition to this one. One of those boxes is made of blue and white marbled glass, and the other is of brown glass that must have been created by a bottle glass factory. There are also several birdcage fountains in the Corning collection. Both of these shapes were also made in colorless glass. Because a mold was employed in their manufacture, these examples are clearly factory products, and it is therefore surprising that both shapes are so rare. The mold must have been very elaborate. The glass box is nearly closed, with only a small hole from which the bird could collect the seed. Several fragments of birdcage fountains were found during excavations at the site of the Boston and Sandwich factory, and this fact, combined with entries in one of the company’s early order books, allows us to attribute the fountains to that firm. Both shapes probably came from the same glasshouse. This seed box was one of 84 objects received by the Corning Museum as a gift from the Jones Museum of Glass and Ceramics in Sebago, Maine. The Jones Museum was founded in 1978 and closed in 2010. Other pieces in its collection went to several museums with decorative arts and/or glass collections. The Corning Museum also has on loan 126 objects from the private collection of Dorothy-Lee Jones, founder of the Jones Museum and a Fellow of The Corning Museum of Glass.