The postwar period brought waves of new industries as the United States sought financial self-reliance. In 1783, a group of businessmen lobbied the Connecticut General Assembly for the right to establish a glasshouse, primarily for the production of window glass. In promoting the East Hartford Glass Works, the Pitkin cousins boasted of Connecticut’s natural resources: “the wood in this State is large and very plenty;—the materials for Glass also plenty.” Around 1790, they shifted production from window glass to bottles and decorative housewares. Their bottles were made in the half-post style, a Germanic tradition which may indicate the ethnic makeup of their workforce. The vessels were dipped in a mold to create fine ribs on their exteriors. Eventually collectors used the term “Pitkin” to describe all half- post, rib- molded flasks. This inkwell is a rare survival, and the only-known blown inkwell with a double opening. The Pitkin-type ribbed decoration swirls in a clockwise direction while a smooth, barely visible area surrounding the tooled openings reveals that the inkwell was made using the half- post method. This inkwell descended in the Pitkin family and attests to the entrepreneurial spirit of the new nation.