Sauce Dish 1884 - 1893

This is a sauce dish created by the New England Glass Company sometime between 1818 and 1888. At the time, industrialization allowed glassworks to produce items like this in larger quantities, changing how people, particularly middle-class families, lived with and used these objects. Consider what it meant to gather around a table with this dish, to partake in a communal meal in nineteenth-century America. Food, its presentation, and the act of sharing, played a role in shaping family and community identities. Was this dish part of a special occasion, or used every day? What was the cultural background of the family using this dish? Did the family dynamics differ depending on whether they were recent immigrants or long-established Americans? The answers to these questions speak volumes about how the domestic space was, and remains, a place of cultural exchange and negotiation. This simple sauce dish invites us to reflect on the ways in which everyday objects can hold profound stories of identity, culture, and the human experience.