Utilities Specialties (U.S.) was probably the largest manufacturer of lids for flips. On this site, visitors will find many flips in the individual categories that have U.S.-supplied lids. It is assumed that these companies offered flips in their catalogs and would ship bowls to U.S. to have them add the lids and to fulfill the orders.

But it also appears that U.S. sold flips, both glass and china, under its own brand. There are glass flips with the company name impressed into the bottom of the bowls, and there are china flips with the company name printed (frequently in metallic gold) on the bottom and no other identification of the bowls' manufacturer.

It's been my practice to stash mystery bowls in either Unidentified China or Unidentified Glass. But bowls with some connection to Utilities Specialties are so common that it seemed a disservice not to give them their own categories, one for glass and one for china:

Utilities Specialties - China
Utilities Specialties - Glass

The following is from Ricciardelli's great-granddaughter Maria Samuelsson, who graciously shared her family's history:

Fiore Ricciardelli, an immigrant from San Pauline, Avellino, Italy, founded Utilities Specialties in 1918 (file number: 9080301000) in Jersey City, N.J., first as an electro-plating concern and later as a restaurant ware manufacturer and distributor. He ran the business with two of his four sons: Rudolph, who ran the shop, and Edward, who handled sales.

"He [Fiore] was the son of Catherine VanCamp of Old Bergen (Jersey City) and Emmanuel Ricciardelli who met Catherine at the Old Bergen Dutch Reform Church which supported Abolition.  They met in 1853 when my great-great-grandfather Emmanuel Ricciardelli came to Catherine's church with Garibaldi to speak about freedom and universal suffrage and their campaign against the Pope's army.

"Catherine Van Camp' s family started their homestead in Peter Stuyvesant's settlement circa 1640 on Paulus Hook.  Part of the property is still held in the family on the site of what was our family's factory location near the Morris Canal.

"My great-grandfather Fiore Ricciardelli life and the Van Camp - Ricciardelli family is an American story larger than your reference to immigration."

Fiore's youngest son Caesar, who would become the notorious black sheep of the family, resented the fact that after the Depression there was not enough business in the family concern to share with him. At some point he stole materials from his father's company and set up a makeshift shop at 141 Railroad Ave., where he began illicitly fabricating lids on his own, hence the few examples that can be found with that location's backstamp below Utilities Specialties.

(The third Ricciardelli son in birth order, George, anglicized his name to Richards and worked in sales for General Electric.)

The R.L. Polk & Co. directory lists the business' address as 206 Van Vorst Street in its 1925-26 edition. It appears that by 1946 the company had moved into adjacent space and had the 206-208 Van Vorst Street address that is stamped on most of their ware. It was located on the Morris Canal.

Slowly the manufacturing part of the business was phased out until only distribution was left in the 1970s. The company was dissolved in 1981. 

Thanks to Ricciardelli's great-granddaughter Maria Samuelsson for contributing much of this information.

Her aunt believes the glass bowls might have been made by Pyrex; Ricciardelli worked closely with Corning Glass when he designed a coffee percolator made by Pyrex. But it is very likely that anything made by Corning Glass/Pyrex would have been marked as such.

It is not known what company (or companies) made the vitrified clay bowls.