the history of itinerant glassworkers

Tag: Manhattan

Following the trail of Lawrence Finn

handbill describing Finn's show

Exhibition of Fancy Glass Working and Spinning United States Hotel, Private Entrance : Mr. Finn. Augusta, Georgia: 1840-1843. CMGL 164968.

Lawrence Finn never stayed in one place for too long. Like many itinerant glassworkers, he was always on the move, traveling across the country to find new audiences. We don’t know much about his life, but let’s take the few clues we have and see if we can find Finn.

Where in the world is Lawrence Finn?

Tracking the path of someone who lived almost 200 years ago can be tricky. Today some people leave a minute-by-minute trail of their lives, but a traveling demonstrator like Lawrence Finn left few lasting records in his wake. Luckily, the job that kept Finn on the road also gives us an advantage when looking for him. When he set up shop in a new location he needed to attract customers, and Finn did so by advertising in the local newspapers and distributing handbills and broadsides. Sometimes the same newspapers would review his show. This paper trail gives us a fairly accurate idea of his travels.

Trail of evidence

Finn was British, and based on advertisements and historical data we can connect him to another Lawrence Finn, likely his father or uncle. This older Finn performed in London, England, before and during the time the younger Finn traveled around the United States. Therefore when both are in the United Kingdom, it can be difficult to determine which Finn was responsible for certain advertisements.

handbill describing one of the Finn's London shows

Finn’s Fancy Glass-Working Exhibition. London: 1815. Collection of the Rakow Research Library, The Corning Museum of Glass, CMGL 112199.

Based on passenger logs and newspaper advertisements, we know the younger Finn likely arrived in New York, New York, from London in October 1827 and rented rooms at 202 Broadway. He opened his exhibition there on Monday, November 12, 1827. At the time, he was perhaps the second itinerant glassworker to perform in the United States.1

newspaper ad

This is the first advertisement Finn placed in the newspaper upon arriving in New York City. Source: New York Historic Newspapers

This first show featured Finn exhibiting his “most curious and pleasing experiments of Fancy Glass Working, Spinning, and Blowing,” and making “articles of the most fanciful description,” including “ships, figures, quadrupeds, birds, flower vases, &c. &c. &c.”2 He worked from 11am to 3pm, and again between 6pm and 10pm. Potential audience members could buy tickets for 25 cents ($6.40 in today’s dollars); children were half price. Finn especially encouraged “heads of families and guardians” to attend his demonstrations.

Other itinerant glassworkers often visited smaller cities and towns, but, based on the surviving advertisements, Finn’s strategy was to stay in large cities near tourist destinations. His New York address, 202 Broadway, was located across the street from St. Paul’s Chapel and down the street from New York City Hall,  Peale’s Museum, and Scudder’s American Museum (later P. T. Barnum’s American Museum).3

At the beginning of 1829, Finn closed his exhibition at 202 Broadway and spent the next few months demonstrating in Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In D.C., he was located near the National Mall on Pennsylvania Avenue — close to where the FBI and Department of Justice buildings are today. He extended his stay in the city due to bad weather, but eventually traveled to Philadelphia, where he set up his show in the Masonic Hall. There, a local newspaper praised Finn’s demonstrations as “highly deserving of patronage,” writing that “few persons will attend the [exhibition] without being much gratified.”4

After a few years, Finn moved to Boston, Massachusetts, and opened his exhibition to a new audience. He was situated near the Old South Meeting House, the Old State House, King’s Chapel, and Benjamin Franklin’s birthplace. A handbill for the show proclaims, “The process of Modeling Figures and Animals from the glass, in a state of Fusion, is so wonderfully curious, as to strike the beholder with astonishment – and must be witnessed, to decide on its merits, as no description can convey an adequate idea of the pleasure it affords.”5

Finn didn’t stay in Boston for long. By the beginning of 1832, he had traveled far south and was demonstrating lampworking above a jewelry store at 115 Chartres Street in New Orleans, Louisiana. Once again it seems he chose his location carefully, renting space in the French Quarter. The price of admission for his show had doubled to 50 cents, and he made additional revenue by selling figurines and ornaments “well adapted for relatives or friends.”6

Finn demonstrated in four New Orleans locations, including this room over a jewelry store. Source: Google News

Over the next decade, Finn revisited many of these cities. He traveled back to New York and Washington, D.C., then Boston, and finally New Orleans. He may have stopped in other cities in between, like Augusta, Georgia, but sometimes his trail dries up for a year or two. Even with all the information we have, Finn’s life and location is still a mystery at times.

Mapping Finn’s route

Examining individual advertisements, reviews, or travel records provides insight into Finn’s life, but arranging multiple documents chronologically and mapping his movements gives us an even better idea of how he spent his time in the United States.

Finn visited New York City, Washington, D.C., Boston, and New Orleans repeatedly, and traveled mostly along the East Coast. Among the cities he visited from the late 1820s through the early 1840s, those mentioned above (excluding Washington, D.C., and including Philadelphia) were among the top five most populous cities of the United States. Only Baltimore, Maryland – at the time, the second largest city in the country – is missing from Finn’s itinerary, although it is entirely likely he demonstrated there, given his travel habits and exhibitions in nearby Washington, D.C. By choosing these major cities as tour stops, Finn exposed his show to hundreds of thousands of people, thereby increasing his potential revenue and popularity. The fact that he was employed by Rubens Peale and John Scudder, Jr., (both owners of successful New York City museums) speaks to his success.

Explore Lawrence Finn’s path from London to New York and beyond using this map.

A version of this post was originally published on the Corning Museum of Glass blog on June 13, 2017.


John Tilley’s wonderful mechanisms

To be seen in a neat Sitting Room, at 141 Broadway: the wonderful mechanisms of fancy glass blower John Tilley. This early American broadside, ca. 1820, enumerates the delights New Yorkers could observe if they paid the 25-cent admission fee to Tilley’s glassmaking and scientific exhibition.

handbill describing the show of John Tilley

Wonderful Mechanism J. Tilley, Fancy Glass Blower, from London. New York: J. Robinson, 1820. Collection of the Rakow Library, The Corning Museum of Glass, CMGL 163866.

John Tilley, originally from London, was the first known itinerant glassworker to bring his exhibition to the United States.1 Eighteenth-century Americans, influenced by their Puritan backgrounds, often shunned traveling entertainers and educators of any sort, some going so far as to outlaw circuses, traveling menageries, and acting troupes. Once those restrictions were lifted, Tilley and others found success touring cities along the East Coast.

Location

Tilley may have been the first glassworker to demonstrate in New York City, but he certainly wasn’t the last to make the city, and specifically Broadway, his home. Later artisans such as Lawrence Finn, W. Belzoni Davidson, and the Woodroffe brothers set up exhibitions in rented rooms and at museums including Barnum’s American Museum at the intersection of Broadway and Ann Street. Like it is today, the street was a center for entertainment.

Even in 1820, New York City (then confined to Manhattan) was bustling. The city’s population had grown to more than 123,000 people, close to 30,000 more than just a decade before.2 William Cobbett, a British farmer, journalist, and politician who lived on a Long Island farm from 1817 until 1819, described the city as resembling “an English town, in point of manners and customs, much more than any other place that I have seen in America.”3 He comments on the low prices and high quality of everything from the food to the household furnishings available to residents.

On women’s fashions, he states, “The most gay promenades in and about London, and even the boxes of our licenced and degraded theatres, are, in point of female dresses, perfect beggary compared with the every day exhibition in the ‘Broad way’ of New York; where the very look of every creature you meet gives evidence of the existence of no taxation without representation.” Based on Cobbet’s description, it is easy to imagine crowds of well-dressed women and men patronizing Tilley’s exhibition.

Show highlights

Like many 19th-century itinerant glassworkers, John Tilley offered his audience a range of enticing entertainments. These included “Spinning and Reeling Hot Glass round a Wheel, with the astonishing velocity of a Mile in less than two minutes” and “Blowing Glass to different degrees of thinness and forming it into various Articles, such as Writing Pens, Smelling Bottles, &c. &c.”

In addition, Tilley explained scientific properties and principles using glass models such as a Cartesian diver and a “Hydro Pneumatic Fountain.” One curious demonstration involved Tilley blowing a “small Globe,” which he said would form “nearly” a vacuum and would fall to the floor “with apparent great weight.”

While John Tilley’s exhibition was “to be seen for a few Days only,” records of his shows and innovations are still available more than two centuries later.

A version of this post was originally published on the Corning Museum of Glass blog on December 19, 2016.


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