A Documented Stiegel Glass

Hundreds of pieces of 18th-century glass have been attributed to Henry William Stiegel, the most romantic figure in the history of early American glass.

Stiegel's story is the classic rags to riches tale, which he carried a step beyond a happy ending by going back to rags. Stiegel, a German immigrant, came to America in 1750, married the daughter of a Lancaster County ironmaster, took over the iron business and diversified into glass production. Called ''The Baron" by his neighbors, he became wealthy and spent lavishly before he over-expanded, went bankrupt and ended his days in poverty in 1780.

Stiegel competed with English and Continental glassmakers, and he did it so well that it is almost impossible to differentiate glass made by Stiegel

from the glass he imitated. Nevertheless, collectors always have paid a premium for the blue and amethyst glass flasks, pitchers and sugar bowls, and enameled and engraved tumblers said to have been made by Stiegel.

Recent scholarship suggests that most of the glass attributed to Stiegel's factory by early collectors and reseachers of American glass was not made there. In fact, only one piece of glass has ever been confidently attributed to Stiegel's American Flint Glass Manufactury in Manheim. It was recently acquired and placed on public view by the Corning Museum in Corning, N.Y.

The colorless lead glass goblet has opaque white twists in its stem, is decorated with a sprig of roses and is engraved "W & E Old." It may have been made for Stiegel's daughter Elizabeth, who married ironmaster William Old in 1773. The goblet was acquired by the Corning Musuem from direct descendants of Elizabeth Stiegel Old.

"It is the best documented piece of Stiegel glass; all you can say of other flasks, tumblers and sugar bowls is 'possibly Stiegel,' " said Jane Shadel Spillman, curator of the Corning Museum. "Not only has the goblet been in the Stiegel family since 1773, but it is just the kind of glass Stiegel advertised he was making."

The goblet was discovered in 1979 by Maryland glass collector Sheldon Butts. In preparing a slide presentation on Stiegel glass, Butts wrote a letter to the 275 known descendants of Stiegel asking whether they had any glass with family history.