Musings on Vintage Mason Jars

I love vintage Mason jars!

If you came to my house and saw how many I have you'd realize what an understatement that is. I started out years ago collecting the big aqua ones with the zinc tops.

I use them in my kitchen pantry to store dried beans and peas and flour and sugar and various cooking needs.


But then the aqua ones started getting too hard to find and too expensive if I did, so I switched to collecting the clear glass ones made by Ball and Atlas.

The clear glass kind are great to use filled with flowers as table centerpieces:

I also put candles in them for special dinner celebrations, and for festive evening parties on a patio you can fix wires around them and hang the the jars with lit candles inside from nearby tree branches.

When we have picnics at our house, I fill one jar with knives, another with spoons, and a third with forks. And they're perfect for "salads on the go," which have become pretty popular lately.

Vintage Mason jars also provide ideal storage in the bathroom, especially for Q-tips and cotton balls. And in the craft room, they corral buttons, thread spools, shells, gem stones, marbles, and whatever else you have that needs containing.

Another of my vintage canning jars is now a lamp,

and one has been outfitted with a soap dispenser (which you can buy here on Etsy at Jarring Creations, like I did--thank you, Kim!) and sits in the bathroom.

Anyway, I just couldn't pass up collecting Mason jars at yard sales and church sales and wherever I found them, so I kept on accumulating more and more and more. Until finally I decided: this is  crazy--I need to start sharing my finds.

So now in my Etsy shop I offer lots of three Ball jars or six Ball jars as well as three Atlas jars and six Atlas jars (which essentially differ only in what's embossed on the front of them). All are pint size:

Mason jars have a fascinating history. John Landis Mason invented this type of jar in 1858, and in 1884 the Ball brothers used his design in creating the first Ball Mason jar.

More history about Ball Mason jars can be found here, and history about the Atlas Jars (also known as Hazel-Atlas) can be found here.

I love vintage canning jars so much I created a Pinterest board with various ideas of what to do with them ~ take a look and start stockpiling your own collection. For me, they're indispensable!