John Hoare was born in Ireland, where he trained as a glass cutter. He came to New York in 1853, and two years later he bought the cutting shop at the Brooklyn Flint Glass Works. In 1868, the glassworks moved to Corning, and Hoare later established a successful cutting firm there. In the 1870s and early 1880s, that firm was one of the largest of its kind in America. Factory records from that period show that it made a wide range of products cut in a variety of patterns. This decanter is cut in the “Croesus” pattern. The pattern was illustrated in the earliest known Hoare catalog, produced about 1890. Hoare supplied a set of tableware for President Ulysses S. Grant in 1873 and won an award at the Chicago world’s fair in 1893.