Uses for a Ball Jar...continued.

If you’ve been reading the blog, you’ve learned about a thermos with a Ball jar insert and a jar used to bury a pet canary. Here are two more uses for a Ball jar:

Coffee Grinder

The Landers, Frary and Clark Company was well known to the American housewife well before Ball made jars. This company made household products – toasters, meat choppers, sausage stuffers, bread makers, screw eyes and much more. Products from this company carried the trade name of “Universal.” Around 1900, Landers, Frary and Clark designed a coffee grinder to screw unto a fruit jar. A Ball jar marked “L.F. & C. Universal” was sold with the coffee grinder, which was designed to mount on a wall.

Bank

In the 1970s, a Muncie bank distributed another kind of bank – one made from a Ball jar. In the jar in the heritage collection, a layer of black-eyed beans, held in place by a rubber and plastic insert, kept the contents of the jar hidden. Four different contents were used in the jars. While the jar was a standard Ball jar, the lid and band are not.