pressed glass, deep bowl, six-petal rim, circular foot with polished pontil mark, circa 1840-1870

measures approximately: 10 1/2" H x 5 5/8" rim diameter x 5" base diameter 

Since wild celery is native to the Mediterranean, growers didn’t start cultivating the vegetable until the early 1800s. Celery didn’t grow easily, making it a luxury and enticing for upper and emerging middle classes in the Victorian era.

Naturally, those who succeeded in growing or obtaining the fickle vegetable wanted to show it off. Celery vases became status symbols. In the late 19th century, wealthy ladies used them as centerpieces, sometimes adding a special celery dish to serve cooked versions that wouldn’t hold their shape. 

With the development of new formulas and techniques, glass-pressing technology had improved markedly by the late 1840s. By this time, pressed tablewares were being produced in large matching sets and innumerable forms. During the mid-1850s, colorless glass and simple geometric patterns dominated. Catering to the demand for moderately-priced dining wares, the glass industry in the United States expanded widely, and numerous factories supplied less expensive pressed glassware to the growing market. At the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations at New York’s Crystal Palace in 1853, for example, the New England Glass Company exhibited 130 pieces of one design, "consisting of bowls, tumblers, champagnes, wines, and jelly glasses." This object belongs to one such service. Although the glass manufactory is not known, the glassware is very typical of the large services that were very popular with America’s middle class in the nineteenth century.