Shiny Brite Ornaments, Made in Wellsboro Pa
I have a collection of these ornaments, inherited from my Grandmother, but I had never realized they are a particular brand - or that they were made locally, in Wellsboro PA. In fact, the vast majority of all Christmas ornaments in the 1940s and 1950s were made in Wellsboro. The company modified their ribbon machine, designed to make lightbulbs, to mass produce the ornaments, and by 1949 Wellsboro was the Worlds Capital For The Christmas Ornament Industry, producing 90% of the worlds Christmas ornaments. In addition to their own line of corning ornaments, and the Shiny Brites, the glass factory located in Wellsboro pa created the ornament blanks for Santa Heim, Coby, George Franke, Marks Brothers, Doubl-Glo, and Santa Novelties.
The Corning Glass website tells us that Christmas ornaments, for centuries were made the small German village of Lauscha, and the entire community was involved in the process.
"Skilled glassblowers made delicate ornaments by heating glass tubes over a flame and then introducing a small ‘puff’ of air in order to expand the tube into a small bubble. The glass ornament was then left as it was or was manipulated into various shapes, such as stars or reindeer.
With the blowing and shaping of the ornament complete, it was sent to be decorated, a task often undertaken by women or children. This was accomplished either with a brush, by pouring liquids into the ornament’s interior, or simply by dipping the glass into a liquid color. After careful packing, the ornaments made in Lauscha were shipped and sold all over the world, including to the United States."
For years, Lauscha was the only supplier of glass ornaments.
And then Max Eckhart, who owned a toy factory in a nearby village, began manufacturing ornaments. Eckhart came to New York in the 1920s, and with war looming in Germany, he realized he would would not be able to reliably ship ornaments from there to the US.
The Ribbon Machine at the corning glass plant in Wellsboro
The Ribbon machine had been invented at the Wellsboro glass factory, for producing Edisons' light bulbs. Eckhart approached the company, and soon they were able to modify their machine to produce the Shiny Brite ornaments.
Ornaments being produced at the Wellsboro factory
“Unable to find labor as cheap as that in Europe, Echart turned to machine and mass production. It uses virtually the same machine with which it makes electric light bulbs. Glass pours molten from huge furnaces, spins out in strips over endless belts, is nudged into shape by compressed air, fashioned by molds which pop around the red-hot glass balls. The formed balls are knocked off the strips by revolving hammers. Then they are annealed, colored, rolled along finished for packing. At peak, Corning makes 300,000 ornaments a day. Besides balls, it makes what the trade calls Small Fancies and Large Fancies in many shapes – bells, oblongs, pyramids, lanterns, diamonds, reflectors, pine cones and acorns.”
"By 1940, Corning was producing about 300,000 unadorned ornaments per day, sending the clear glass balls to outside artists, including those at Max Eckardt’s factory in New Jersey, for decoration. The ornaments were lined with silver nitrate, then run through a lacquer bath, decorated by Eckardt’s employees, and finally, packaged in brown cardboard boxes."
"During World War II, however, the lacquer paint and silver lining became scarce, forcing Eckardt to make clear ornaments with thin, pastel stripes, which didn’t require as much pigment. The metal caps and hooks were replaced with cardboard and yarn. Some ornaments came with a tiny sprig of tinsel inside, but eventually, even this small amount of metal was prohibited due to wartime shortages."
By 1949, the Williamsport Gazette reported that Wellsboro was the Worlds Capital for Christmas Ornament Industry.
By 1940, corning was making their own line of ornaments, in addition to the Shiny Brites. They also made blanks for Santa Heim, Coby, George Franke, Marks Brothers, Doubl-Glo, and Santa Novelties
A 1941 article in Popular Mechanics said:
Corning Glass in Wellsboro developed molds to emulate all the ornaments that had been purchased from Germany here in America. The molds were sprayed with linseed oil to keep the glass from sticking to the cast iron molds. Other shapes included Santa Clauses, Sleighs, Candy Canes, Christmas Trees that would eventually be silvered and painted.
Molds for the pinecone, and ribbed teardrop, ornaments
The original ornaments were all silver, and all round. Colors were soon added, and then shapes as well. Over time, they came to produced in red, green, gold, pink, and blue colors, and , new shapes included tops, bells, icicles, teardrops, trees, lanterns, and pinecones.
During World War II, Shiny Brites metal ornament caps and hooks were replaced with cardboard tabs and string. The rarest, and therefor most collectable, shiny brite ornaments are transparent, with cardboard tops.
Ornament boxes were decorated with a picture of Santa Claus shaking hands with Uncle Sam. Silver nitrate and lacquer were eliminated, because of their scarcity. Paint was applied directly onto the clear glass balls.
After the war ornaments were again topped with the original metal Shiny Brite cap and hook.
L.L. Sterns Ad from 1957 [Williamsport]
In 1955, Thor, a washing machine manufacturer, bought Shiny Brite – eventually producing about 75 percent of the ornaments sold throughout the world.
Workers "grinding the pike" on ornaments
During the years of peak production, the company had factories in Hoboken NJ, North Bergen, and West New York, as well as in Wellsboro Pa.
The Shiny Brite main office and showroom were located at 45 East 17th st in New York City.
1952 Advertisement for Shiny Brites, in the Sears Catalog
In 2001 Christopher Radko began reissuing Shiny Brites most popular ornaments.
A boxed set of the modern Radco issued Shiny Brite flocked ornaments
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DATING THE ORNAMENTS
According to Blue Moon Estate Sales, Shiny Brites can be dated and the styles differentiated by checking the topper and the decorations as follows:
Late 1930s: silver-tone metal toppers; orbs and shapes; hand-decorated clear and colored glass; silver nitrate coated interiors; spheres, Americanized Santa shapes and early Art Deco styles.
Early 1940s: spheres, bells, pyramids, reflectors, pine cones, acorns, oblongs and diamond shapes; metal cap toppers; hand-decorated exteriors.
WWII-era: cardboard and paper toppers with yarn hangs; “non-silvered” transparent orbs with tinsel inside; “non-silvered” transparent or opaque orbs with simple, pastel hand-painting; boxes often featured Santa shaking hands with Uncle Sam.
1950s: colorful orbs and shapes; silver nitrate coated interiors; machine-decorated; crimped, scalloped metal toppers marked “Made in U.S.A.” and “Shiny Brite.”
Williamsport Sun Gazette, December 24 1949
The Corning Ribbon Machine is now part of the Henry Ford collection
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From the book "Shiny Happy Pyrex People"
The Radco Ornaments
In Wellsboro’s Penn Wells Hotel and Lodge lobby there is an American flag created from the Shiny Brite Christmas bulbs that was gifted to the Penn Wells by the Corning Corporation.
Thank you so much for posting this! I have many of my family's Shiny Brites. I cherish them because they were my Mother's, but now I love them even more. Many are hanging on my tree right now, and i just checked the toppers, and yep, they say Shiny Brite!
ReplyDeleteHeather, where did you get the information that there was a Shiny Brite plant in Wellsboro? While there was a Corning glass factory, that supplied Shiny Brite and several other companies with “blank” ornaments, there was never a Shiny Brite factory in Wellsboro. I think it’s important that the history of these American originals be kept as accurate as possible.
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