H and H Coffee

Dedicated to the history of the Hoffmann-Hayman Coffee Co. founded 1899 in San Antonio, Texas.

Owens-Illinois Glass Company

National glass manufacturer. Supplied Crystalvac jars in multiple sizes and colors for Hoffmann-Hayman in the post–Three Rivers / Ball-era of the line. Base marks and date codes (the diamond-oval-I logo plus plant number and year digit) are documented on multiple collection posts — e.g. the 2015-12-28 three-pound jar (interpreted as Plant 7 = Alton, IL; year code “2” = 1932) and the 2016-01-17 large Victoria jar (Plant 7, year code “9” = 1939).

The Owens-Illinois single-digit decade convention requires triangulation with surrounding evidence to disambiguate years that share the same last digit (e.g., 1932 vs 1942).

Glass-machinery patent pool — antitrust context

Owens-Illinois was named as a co-defendant alongside Hartford-Empire Co. and Ball Bros. in the January 1946 $1,350,000 anti-trust suit filed by three former Three Rivers Glass shareholders (Charles R. Tips, W. L. Moody III, Harry R. Rogers) in U.S. District Court (San Antonio), alleging Sherman and Clayton Act violations connected to the January 1937 dissolution of Three Rivers Glass. (1946-01-03 The News; 1946-01-04 SA Express-News.) See 1946 Three Rivers shareholders’ anti-trust suit.

The Texas filing was voluntarily dismissed by plaintiff in November 1947 (Judge Ben H. Rice Jr., W.D. Tex.) so it could refile in U.S. District Court Indianapolis under Indiana’s 15-year SOL — see 1947 dismissal/refile event. The Indiana refiling’s disposition is undocumented. Tips’s November 1947 court statement also referenced a U.S. Supreme Court order to sell the Three Rivers plant under the US v. Hartford-Empire 1945 decree — Owens-Illinois was a defendant in that federal anti-trust case as a major Hartford-Empire patent-pool licensee.

The December 1938 TNEC Senate monopoly-committee testimony established Hartford-Empire’s licensing-and-machinery control of the glass-container industry. Owens-Illinois was identified in period press as one of the major patent-pool licensees (1938-12-13 SA Express-News “Glass Container Business Bottled Through Patents”) and was a defendant in the federal United States v. Hartford-Empire Co. decision (1945). The 1946 TRG shareholders’ suit invoked this broader antitrust frame; the petition’s specific theory connecting Owens-Illinois to the 1937 TRG dissolution is undocumented on this site pending federal court records.

Open questions

  • Did O-I supply H&H before the Ball acquisition of Three Rivers (1936), as a parallel supplier?
  • Or was O-I a Ball-era / post-Three-Rivers replacement?
  • Full range of O-I plant codes that appear on H&H Crystalvac jars (Plant 7 = Alton is documented; others?)
  • Did O-I supply both clear and amber Crystalvac variants, or were the amber jars a different supplier?
  • Corporate lineage: What is the history of Owens-Illinois Glass becoming Owens-Corning, and where is each company today? (Common collector confusion — the two names share “Owens” but appear to be distinct entities: O-I a glass-container firm, Owens-Corning a 1938 fiberglass joint-venture with Corning Glass Works. Needs primary-source verification of the actual relationship and current corporate status of both.)

See also