Ball Blue Canning Jars

 This weekend we made a quick visit to our local antique mall and while there I admired these old blue canning jars made by Ball.  Later that afternoon I was cleaning our dining room and suddenly realized how pretty the blue jars would look there.  I don't do this often, but when the girls woke up from their nap, we actually piled back in the car so that I could go back and buy these jars!

Since then I had fun doing a little reading on old Ball canning jars and learning how to "date" them.  This particular blue glass was discontinued around 1937 and was caused from the minerals used in the sand and the amount of oxygen used in their furnaces.  The jars I purchased have the writing "Perfect Mason" on them, which began appearing around the year 1913.  You can see that in the picture above the Ball logos are actually different.  From the little research I did, I believe the jar on the left would have been made somewhere between the years 1923-1933 whereas the jar on the right was made between 1910-1923. 

 On the bottom of the jar is a circle surrounding a number.  The circle is actually one way of determining whether or not you have an authentic jar - apparently it is an indicator of whether or not the jar was manufactured on an Owens machine, which was used before more modern machines. I've always wondered what the number on the bottom of the jars mean; however, apparently it was only used as a mould identifier. 

 I placed the three jars on top of the piano where I had a large empty place waiting for something... anything... to take residence!  (smile)

 They just seem to add a small touch of some needed blue in this corner of the dining room.

They perfectly match the dining room curtains, which is the reason I hightailed it back to the store... it's difficult to match this color.

I can't resist showing you another addition to our dining room.  We dyed some eggs with Jillian for the first time and she loved it.  (smile)