Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Well-preserved: The Mason jar turns 150
Countless food memories are sealed up tight in those revolutionary containers.
At 150 years old, the venerable Mason jar is ...
Food writer Lindsey Nair
- lindsey.nair@roanoke.com | (540) 981-3343
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Peaches, fireflies, moonshine and daisies.
These four very different items all belong squarely in this column because of the simple vessel that often contains them -- the Mason jar.
This year marks the 150th birthday of the venerable container, which was invented by metalworker John Landis Mason in 1858 to elevate canning to a new, less botulism-ridden era.
Prior to Mason's brainchild, foods were still being hermetically sealed in glass or tin containers, a method with a high margin of error.
John Mason's threaded jar and screw-on zinc cap revolutionized home canning for generations to come. The fact that mom is still putting up tomatoes and dilly beans in them, albeit with a newer, two-part lid, is a testament to the importance of Mason's simple invention.
It's too bad, then, that Mason sold off his rights to the jar to several different people and died a relatively poor man around 1900.
"He probably could have made a lot more money," Mason jar aficionado Richard Cole said.
Trivia from a jarhead
If you're in a job like this long enough, you find out there's an expert on just about every subject in existence. Cole, 64, of Muncie, Ind., is the expert on Mason jars.
He spent 27 years with the Ball company, which manufactured Mason jars for more than a century. For much of that time, Ball was located in Muncie. Both Ball and Kerr brands are now made by a company called Jarden Home Brands, also in Muncie.
After his retirement from Ball, Cole became the curator of the Mason jar collection at Minnetrista, a museum in Muncie.
Cole, who is retired, can tell you that Mason jar manufacturers embossed them with "Mason's Patent Nov. 30, 1858" even after John Mason's patent ran out in 1879.
He can tell you that it was the Kerr company, headed by Alexander Kerr, that invented the two-part lid that is still in use today. Kerr also made the first wide-mouth jars, which Ball was quick to duplicate.
"Kerr had a famous ad that showed a lady's hand putting a whole peach down in a jar," Cole said. "You could actually fit it down in there."
As I listened with geeky fascination, Cole also explained that early Mason jars naturally had an aquamarine tint because of iron impurities in the glass. He said an old urban legend credits housewives with first requesting clear glass Mason jars.
After all, their prized peach preserves sure didn't look as peachy at the county fair in a greenish jar.
In order to counteract the aquamarine effect, manufacturers added a pink mineral, manganese dioxide, to the mix, Cole said. They had no idea that exposure to sunlight would cause the jars to turn a dark, pinkish-purple color.
These "Sun-Colored Amethyst" jars, which were only made between 1900 and 1920, are now some of the most prized among Mason jar collectors.
Other colored jars in shades such as amber, purple, blue or red were made that way on purpose. Some of those can be worth thousands of dollars. In fact, according to Cole, a cathedral-style pickle jar once sold for more than $42,000. But while collectors find the antique jars valuable, regular folks have found regular old Mason jars invaluable for myriad purposes.
Canning fruit was just the beginning.
From honey to corn liquor
The shelves in my memory are lined with rows and rows of Mason jars.
They are filled with Grandma Nair's damson preserves, so purple they were almost black. Beside the preserves is Paw Paw's honeycomb, soaked in golden honey, from his beekeeping days.
Mom's green beans, Italian tomatoes, salsa and venison take up space beside less appetizing contents, such as the (almost) whole squirrel bodies, devoid of a tail, head, legs and skin. Dad loved to eat them; mom said they reminded her of cats.
During the winter, we always had jars of apple butter from some church or another that we spread on hot cornbread.
On summer evenings, we filled Mason jars with lightning bugs on the banks of the Cowpasture River or stuffed them with cornflowers and Queen Anne's lace for grandma.
As a Southwest Virginia native, I'm also aware that the success of Mason jars has probably been driven, in part, by the success of white lightning.
"The Mason jar is pretty much bonded with the image of moonshine," said Matthew Rowley, who wrote a book about corn liquor called "Moonshine!"
Cole shared a few urban legends about Mason jars and moonshine, which got a chuckle out of Rowley.
In one story, moonshiners traveled to Indiana to ask the Ball company to make 56-ounce jars in addition to the 64-ounce jars so they could save 8 ounces on every jar. In another, moonshiners told Ball company executives that squared-off jars would be a lot easier to stack in their trunk than the original round ones.
Rowley took those stories with a grain of salt, but he doesn't downplay the importance of the Mason jar in the illegal moonshine industry. They are, in some ways, synonymous with quality.
During the Depression, men and women who sold a little moonshine on a small scale to make ends meet were said to be working the "fruit jar trade" or the "Mason jar trade," he said. Today, large-scale moonshiners sell their stuff in big, plastic jugs, but those who still bottle it in Mason jars represent the "craft distillers," if you will.
"That alcohol starts to leach out chemicals, taste and aromas from the plastic, and it devolves," Rowley said. "It's 'spitting whiskey' -- so bad that its only purpose is to spit it into a bonfire so it explodes."
In a clear Mason jar, serious moonshine lovers can see the clarity. They can see that they are drinking something pure, clear, free of bugs and bubbling like a true 100-proof whiskey.
Mason jars are so crucial to the moonshine image, in fact, that as legal versions of white lightning continue to emerge on liquor store shelves, many are packaged and sold in Mason jars.
"There are a whole lot more moonshine or legal spirits that sort of feed off that Mason jar imagery and heritage now than even just a few years ago," Rowley said.
After 150 years, it doesn't look like Mason jars are going out of style anytime soon. The sinking economy and a trend toward chemical-free local food has more people planting backyard gardens and, it would seem, more folks putting up produce for the winter.
And after those sweet pickles or that pureed pumpkin get consumed, there will be yet another use for that same jar.
I'm thinking nails, gumballs, small change, safety pins. ...
What's in the Mason jars of your memory? Share it on the blog.
