Small H and H Crystalvac with wire-and-wood holder

Provenance note: This purchase was through Etsy (not eBay), so there is no matching row under records/ebay-orders/; accession HH-PACKAGING-2014-0008 uses the collection photos as the primary record.

From KimmysKicks on Etsy we bought a Crystalvac-line jar from Bowie, Texas.

First, it is small—about a one-pound coffee size—where most of our square Crystalvacs are two- or three-pound forms. Michael David Smith’s Texas Glass pictures a smaller bottle of this family, not the tall three-pound columns we usually show.

Second, the holder is a wood handle on a wire cage around the jar. The vessel itself reads as a tall Mason-style cylinder, so the basket may be a later add-on in the manner of grocery wire carriers for Ball jars.

Finally, the closure is a zinc screw band and clear glass top with the Ball wordmark, while the base still carries Three Rivers Glass–era mold marks (a 7 with “I” in the diamond and an 8 on the bottom, in the layout the seller called out). The Ball Brothers eventually owned the Three Rivers plant; this may be a transitional closure on company glass or a period replacement that still threaded correctly. Either way it is a useful teaching piece for how H and H jars lived in pantries after the packing house sold them.