H and H Coffee

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

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.

Corporate lineage — the Owens-Corning joint venture (and a Corning footnote)

Owens-Illinois did not “become” Owens-Corning — a common conflation, since the names share “Owens.” The accurate history: in 1935, Owens-Illinois Glass Company and Corning Glass Works jointly formed Owens-Corning Fiberglas (incorporated as an independent company 1 Nov 1938) to commercialize fiberglass. The two parents remained separate companies:

  • Owens-Illinois continued as the glass-container maker — H&H’s Crystalvac jar supplier — and survives today as O-I Glass, Inc.
  • Owens-Corning became the fiberglass / building-materials firm (pink insulation; Toledo, OH) — a distinct, still-independent company.
  • Corning Glass Works (the other JV parent) became Corning Inc., the specialty-glass maker.

Modern footnote (six degrees of H&H glass). The same Corning that co-founded Owens-Corning with H&H’s jar supplier now makes the cover glass for every iPhone and Apple Watch (Gorilla Glass → Ceramic Shield). On 6 Aug 2025 Apple committed $2.5 billion to have Corning manufacture 100% of that cover glass at Harrodsburg, Kentucky (Raw Sources Registry). A genuine but tangential thread linking H&H’s Depression-era jar supplier to today’s smartphone glass — via the 1935 Owens-Corning venture, not via O-I “becoming” anything.

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…? Resolved (2026-06-15): O-I did not become Owens-Corning. Owens-Corning was a 1935 joint venture of Owens-Illinois + Corning Glass Works (independent 1938); O-I continued as a glass-container firm (now O-I Glass). See Corporate lineage above. The “became” framing is the collector confusion.

See also

People

Events

  • 1946 Three Rivers shareholders’ anti-trust suit
  • 1947 Three Rivers suit dismissed in Texas, refiled in Indiana
  • Hartford-Empire testimony names Three Rivers Glass in U.S. Senate monopoly probe

Companies

Brands

External