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The Heisey Glass Company opened its doors in 1896 in Newark, Ohio. Its founder, Augustus H. Heisey was born in Hanover, Germany. He emigrated as a child with his family, originally settling in Pennsylvania, where as a young man he began his career in the glass industry as a clerk and salesman. During the Civil War he served with the union army in a career which took him to the rank of captain after the battle of Gettysburg. After the war he returned to the glass industry, eventually becoming one of the best salesmen in the business.
From its inception, Heisey marketed fine crystal and higher-end glassware that was instantly popular. It was marketed as the finest hand-made crystal in America. In these early years, the company was also known as the Diamond H Tableware
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Company; from the beginning, they marked almost all of their production with the famous "diamond-H" mark. Its first lines were table sets and other table glassware in imitation-cut patterns, i.e., they copied expensive cut patterns and manufactured them less expensively by pressing the glass into a mold. Heisey's own colonial pressed pattern (the #300 Peerless) became the company's mainstay for most of its first decade of production. By 1915, the company had expanded into both etched ware, some minor cut glassware, and minor blown glass patterns (marketed under their American Crystal label). In the 1920's, the company began to heavily market colored glass, just beginning its reign of popularity. Many of Heisey's unique colors were developed by its chemist Emmett Olson between 1925
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Heisey Colors
A note on Heisey colors:
The high point of using colored glass for Heisey was between 1925-1935 (the "Color Era"). The tastes of the time received colored glass very favorably, especially during the depression. Heisey crystal, however, is not "depression glass" a term which almost always refers to cheaper soda glass produced in mass quantities during the depression, often colored as well. With only a rare exception, Heisey did little experimentation with opalescent or iridescent techniques employed by Fenton, Northwood, and others during the depression, and glass earlier in the century which has come to be called carnival glass (also mostly soda glass).
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