Lift this one with your knees. Empty, it weighs thirty pounds, and that is before a single drop goes in. Our newest arrival is a vintage Corning Pyrex carboy, twenty-three inches of heavy industrial glass built to hold twelve gallons and survive whatever the workday threw at it.
Corning introduced Pyrex borosilicate glass in 1915, and while most of us know it from pie plates and measuring cups, the same formula quietly went to work in laboratories, breweries, dairies, and chemical plants. Borosilicate shrugs off thermal shock and resists most acids, which is why a vessel like this one could take distilled water in the morning and something far less friendly by afternoon. This is glass that was hired, not decorated.
You can read the work in the walls. They are thick enough to bend the room behind them, with soft vertical ripples and the faint swirl of the mold still visible across the shoulder. A raised maker’s mark sits just below the curve. The lip is a rolled collar, generous and a little uneven, the kind of finish that came off a production line rather than an artist’s bench. Filled, you would be looking at roughly one hundred thirty pounds of glass and water, which tells you everything about how these were meant to be handled.
Empty, it is a spectacular floor piece. Set it in an entryway with a few tall dried branches, or leave it completely bare beside a fireplace and let the light do the work. Clear glass at this scale reads as sculpture, and it holds its own next to almost any style.
Come see it in person at Pollyanna’s Antiques in downtown Mt. Clemens. We are open Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday from 10 to 4, and this one is not sneaking out the door under anyone’s arm.