Some of my upcoming crafts will be using mason jars. They are a wonderful surface to use for lighting, painting and filling with “stuff”. But did you know…. the earliest jars were sealed with wax. The threaded mason jars were developed in 1858 by tinsmith John L. Mason. He developed a way to cut threads into a metal lid. Mason paired the threaded and gasket lid with a matching threaded glass jar that was re-usable. If you see 1858 on a mason jar, that is the patent date, and not the date of the jar’s manufacture. While most jars sell for only a few dollars, some have sold for as high as $30,000. The value of a jar is related to its age, rarity, and condition. So you never know what you might find at a yard sale. Happy hunting.
