Three Rivers Glass Show, April 28-29 2017

Notes from the 2017 Three Rivers Glass Co. show, which marked the 80th anniversary of the factory’s closing. The show draws Crystalvac collectors and Three Rivers historians together for a weekend of display tables, trades, and talks. We kept a paper trail in the camera roll: the Grace Armantrout Museum flyer and printed company summary, a large-format 1931 TRGCo wall calendar on the tables, the one-pound H and H Blend labeled Crystalvac Mac Johanson had bought in Austin (the Corpus Christi collector’s October 2016 shop snapshot and the same jar back on Mac’s table at the Gurwitz Center), The Progress below-the-fold clipping with the amber and clear pair, and the Texas Historical Commission marker on the weekend’s refinery-and-rail loop. What follows is the running set of facts picked up between those conversations and the marker walk, preserved here in the collector-notebook style we use for history posts.

Show flyer

Official handout for Three Rivers Glass Co. Glass and Bottle Show 2017: Friday April 28, 3–7 p.m., and Saturday April 29, 9 a.m.–3 p.m., at the Gurwitz Community Center, 104 N. Harborth Dr., Three Rivers — $5 admission, organized by the Grace Armantrout Museum, with city, chamber, and local business sponsors. The poster art is a line-drawn Three Rivers bottle signed Amanda Shouse ’17.

Company summary sheet

A show display sheet headlined Three Rivers Glass Company, 1922 – 1937 — short copy on Texas’s first mass-production glasshouse, why the bottles and jars are collected today, and how to spot mark variations (3R★, 3 RIVERS★, THREE RIVERS★, THREE★RIVERS). The footer promotes Texas Glass: An Illustrated History of the Three Rivers Glass Company (photographs and a price list for many pieces).

Ball Glass closure of TRGCo

Ball Glass Company was found guilty of monopoly behavior, including buying competitors in order to shut them down. Acting on inside information, Ball blocked a government loan to Three Rivers Glass Co. and purchased the company in 1936. They fulfilled existing orders until closing the factory in 1938. TRGCo was the last competitor Ball was able to buy and shut down.

Glass molds were sometimes owned by the customer that ordered them, so Crystalvac molds could still exist out in the world — but the stock Three Rivers molds were likely destroyed by Ball when the factory was closed.

Sand, rail, and logistics

Quartzose sand for making glass was sourced from a fourth-generation family quarry in Whitsett, Texas, upstream from Three Rivers. A railroad depot in Three Rivers helped get the town established, and TRGCo had a spur built next to the factory to easily ship glass around the state — including up to San Antonio, where H and H Coffee had its own spur to receive Crystalvac jars. Eventually rail rates were raised by 33% and TRGCo switched to hauling glass on trucks. At the Texas historical marker for the glass factory, now at a gas station, two sets of railroad tracks continue south past a large oil refinery.

Open questions for collectors

• No one has found a TRGCo three-pound Crystalvac jar.
• No one has found a three-pound Crystalvac jar in amber glass.
• There are two shades of TRGCo amber glass, dark and honey.
• TRGCo promotional wall calendars exist in large and small formats; the large example photographed at the show is dated 1931 on its printed month grids.

Promotional calendar — large format

Collectors distinguish a large wall calendar from a smaller TRGCo promotional calendar (both turn up in displays). This large-format piece centers February 1931, with January and March at the foot flanking a 3 RIVERS STAR BOTTLES logo; the top panel is a factory-interior photograph captioned HERE’S WHERE GLASS SAND STARTS ON A THREE AND A HALF DAY TRIP, with supporting copy on batch ingredients and a 125-ton furnace capacity. The bottom strip lists product lines such as beverage bottles, milk bottles, and packers ware.

The Austin one-pound jar

A collector of East Texas soda bottles in Corpus Christi had stumbled on an amber Crystalvac jar that we were able to add to the collection. A few months later he forwarded us a photo of a clear one-pound jar with a paper label, taken at an antique shop in Austin. We called the shop to track it down and sent the photo over, but they couldn’t find it. We’d missed it — but we at least knew one existed, so there could be more. Below is that forwarded snapshot (October 23, 2016) — labeled H AND H BLEND Coffee, Hoffmann-Hayman Coffee Co., San Antonio, Texas, on the square Crystalvac body.

We found that jar again today, on one of the collector’s display tables at the show. Mac bought the jar in Austin, and it was featured on the front page of The Progress newspaper to announce the show. Same jar on Mac’s table at the Gurwitz Center — Crystalvac embossed on the shoulder, paper label with ONE POUND NET WEIGHT, H AND H BLEND Coffee, MEDIUM GROUND, Hoffmann-Hayman Coffee Co., San Antonio, Texas, and STEEL CUT · 100% PURE on the bottom band.

The Progress front page

The Progress ran “GLASS SHOW THIS WEEKEND” below the fold on the front page, with a Contributed photo of two 1930s jars — amber and clear one-pound H and H Blend Crystalvac examples — alongside copy on Hoffmann-Hayman’s 1932 vacuum-pack jars from Three Rivers Glass Co., the 1937 Ball Bros. sale, weekend hours at the Gurwitz Community Center (104 N. Harborth Ave.), $5 admission, and the Grace Armantrout Museum phone number. The clear labeled jar in the clipping is Mac’s Austin jar from the previous section.

For label detail without newsprint halftone, the same jar forms appear in collection photography:

Instagram 2017-04-29: 1-pound Crystalvac jars made front page of Three Rivers newspaper this week

Historical marker

The Texas historical marker for Three Rivers Glass Company stands on the show weekend route — the same one described above near the refinery and rail lines.

Instagram 2017-04-29: Three Rivers Glass historical marker.