How to date your antique canning jars.

Home canning has been around since the 1800’s. In the search to improve the process, a New Jersey-born tinsmith named John Landis Mason patented threaded screw-top jars (he was only 26 at the time). Those first mason jars were intended to be air and water-tight and were made from the beautiful aqua blue glass we love today! According to Masonjars.com, Ball Corporation began manufacturing glass home-canning jars in 1884, the product that established Ball as a household name and licensed Mason's design.

According to the Smithsonian Magazine, many of those first transparent aqua glass ball jars are referred to by collectors as “Crowleytown Jars”, because they believe they were first produced in Crowleytown, New Jersey.

If you are wondering how to figure out just how old your antique ball jar is, we found this handy chart that will help date it!