Owens-Illinois Glass Company

National glass manufacturer. Supplied Crystalvac jars in multiple sizes and colors for Hoffmann-Hayman. 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).

Supply window — corrected 2026-07-21

Owens-Illinois is documented supplying H&H from at least 1936, and should no longer be described as a “1940s+” or purely post-Ball supplier. Four one-pound smooth-body Crystalvac jars accessioned in July 2026 all carry the diamond-oval-I mark from plant 7 (Alton, Illinois):

Together with the 2016-01-17 Victoria jar (plant 7, 1939), that gives a continuous plant-7 run from 1936 to 1939 — squarely inside the decade the Crystalvac Jar item guide previously reserved for Three Rivers and Ball. The item guide’s “Owens-Illinois → 1940s+” and “smooth walls → post-c.1940” rules were corrected on the same date.

This fits the corporate record rather than straining it. Three Rivers Glass entered receivership in 1932 — the same year H&H launched Crystalvac with a 250,000-jar order — reopened only briefly in late 1936, was reorganized under Ball in December 1936, and the Texas corporation was dissolved in January 1937. A South Texas supplier in that condition could not have carried H&H’s jar volume alone through the 1930s, so an Owens-Illinois presence from the middle of the decade is the expected outcome, not an anomaly. The transition is better read as gradual and overlapping than as a clean Three Rivers → Ball → Owens-Illinois handoff.

Open questions.

• How early does the O-I relationship actually start? The 2015-12-28 three-pound jar’s “2” was read as 1932, which would put O-I in the supply chain from the launch year. Given the single-digit ambiguity that reading needs corroboration — 1942 is equally available on the mark alone. Re-photographing that base is the cheapest way to test it.
• Concentration at plant 7. Every dated H&H Owens-Illinois specimen so far is Alton, Illinois. Whether Alton was the dedicated works for this contract, or simply the plant whose jars happen to have survived, is undetermined.
• Did Ball ever actually supply H&H? The Ball stage is currently inferred from the TRG acquisition rather than from any marked jar in the collection. No Ball-marked Crystalvac has been documented here.

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

• Charles R. Tips

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

• Ball Brothers Glass — fellow 1946 defendant
• Hartford-Empire Co. — lead 1946 defendant; glass-machinery patent-pool master
• Hoffmann-Hayman Coffee Company — corporate hub
• Three Rivers Glass Company

Brands

• Crystalvac Jars
• H and H Crystalvac

External

• External: Owens-Illinois bottle and container marks — collector reference

Synthesis

• Jar Supplier Transition — Three Rivers → Owens-Illinois