Seneca Boston-Florence Higginbotham Collection
Burnett Glass
Burnett’s Standard Flavoring Extracts were a food flavoring extract made and sold by Joseph Burnett & Co. in Boston, Massachusetts from the mid-19th century through the mid-20th century. Joseph Burnett, the founder of the company started as an apothecarist and eventually moved over to producing and selling predominately household and food items. The flavoring extracts produced came in a variety of flavors including lemon, orange, ginger, nectarine, peach, celery, vanilla, almond, rose, gloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon. These flavors were advertised for flavoring various baked goods, soups, sauces, and gravies. The bottle shown is one such flavoring extract bottle, dating between 1910 through the 1920s.
Seneca Boston- Florence Higginbotham House Iron
Many today will recognize this as an early iteration of a common household appliance, an iron for pressing fabric materials. In the mid to late 1800’s irons such as this one would be placed flat side down over a heat source. Once the flat bottom was warm enough, it would be removed from the heat source and placed onto the cloth for ironing out wrinkles. This iron was recovered from the Seneca Boston-Florence Higginbotham House in Nantucket during excavations carried out in 2008 by UMass Boston.
Woven Milk Glass Basket
This basket can be found in the Westmoreland Catalog in 1904. It is labeled as the “The Westmoreland Specialty No. 1 Bushel Basket” and came with two lid choices, including a basket cover and a “peep cover” with chicks hatching. The peep cover would have cost just a few cents more than the bushel basket cover. Both baskets came in a variety of colors, including some that were painted. They also were sold in a version where on the side of the basket a scene depicted farm animals or farm life. This bushel basket’s intended use was as a small sugar container, likely to hold small amount for coffee or tea. Photos of various versions and the catalog can be found in the link below.