Binghamton Glass Company
Binghamton, New York (1880-1957)
“B in a diamond” mark
The Binghamton Glass Company produced handmade bottles from its beginning up to approximately 1930, thereafter continuing to sell glassware as a wholesale distributor (glass made by other concerns), including a line of “Diamond I” prescription ware made by Illinois Glass Company of Alton, IL. The last mention of this company appeared in the 1957 Binghamton city directory.
The great majority of bottles produced by Binghamton do not carry a glassmakers’ ID mark. Many of the “Dr. Kilmer Swamp Root / Kidney, Liver and Bladder” cure/remedy bottles (well known to antique bottle collectors and diggers) were made by Binghamton Glass Co.
A few bottles that are known to have been made by this company bear a “B inside a Diamond” mark on the base. Known bottles with the “B in a diamond” mark include square horseradish bottles (would be generally termed “square pickle bottles” by the average collector) that were pictured in local Binghamton Glass Co. newspaper ads from the early 1900s. Those bottles were evidently made in considerable numbers at the factory over a period of several years.
Also, a typical light aqua, rectangular medicine-type bottle which was found with a paper label for Harris Extract Company of Binghamton, circa 1906, carries this mark on the bottom and can safely be attributed to this glassworks.
It seems apparent that the great majority of bottles produced by Binghamton were not marked with any glassmaker identification.
Much more detailed information can be found in a new reference work by Maurice R. Hitt, entitled A History of the Binghamton Glass Company (published in 2011) . Thank you Maurice for this information!
NOTE: This “B inside a diamond” trademark is not to be confused with a similar mark used by Boyd’s Crystal Art Glass of Cambridge, Ohio. Boyd produced decorative, ornamental, novelty and reproduction glassware in a wide range of colors, but NOT utilitarian bottles and jars.
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