Henry William Stiegel (1729-1785), a German-born American iron founder and glassmaker, is best known for the colorful blown glass associated with his name.

Henry Stiegel was born near Cologne and emigrated to Philadelphia in 1750 with his widowed mother and younger brother. After a year or so in Philadelphia, he went to work in Lancaster County for an iron founder, whose daughter, Elizabeth Huber, he married in 1752. By 1756 Stiegel had become a partner in the ironworks, which was run on a cooperative basis, and he renamed it Elizabeth Furnace. In 1760 he became a subject of Great Britain. By then he was an important community leader and a lay delegate to the Lutheran Ministerium of Pennsylvania.

Elizabeth Furnace was modernized, and a small company town was built around it. Under Stiegel's energetic influence the foundry produced stoves, heating devices, and almost every kind of object that could be made of...