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There’s joy in jars. Just ask Joanne Sigglekow.

As a professional home canner, she packs glass Mason jars with sun-kissed peaches, plums, chutney, hot sauce, carrots, jalapeños, lemons — and that’s just a drop in the basket. With brine time peaking, her last batch of pickled cucumbers hit 400 pounds.

“I really love it because people are so happy to buy my food,” says the proprietor of Joanne’s Urban Pantry in west-end Toronto.

But it’s also the “esthetically pleasing” jars brimming with nostalgia that deserve a turn in the spotlight, according to Sigglekow: “There’s just so much history in a Mason jar.”

Vintage jars from the 1960s or ’70s that customers return to her are sometimes filled from a recipe of the same era. Her mother-in-law Rita’s recipe for Reets Beets — “the best beets ever!” — is a favourite.

Centuries ago, cold-climate dwellers relied on smoking, salting, drying and fermenting to feed themselves through winter. Heat-based preserving, which originated in the early 1800s, was tricky because seals were often imperfect.

Food safety improved in 1858 when John Landis Mason, a tinsmith and father of nine, came up with a container of see-through bleached glass with a ribbed neck topped with a flat metal lid and screw-on cap that created an airtight seal. Other manufacturers, including Ball, Kerr and Bernardin, followed suit.

By the early 1900s, Mason jars were ubiquitous, showing off prize-winning jams and pickles at country fairs and given as gifts in various social circles. Even bootleggers used the glass containers for their illicit homemade spirits during Prohibition.

Since then jars have waxed and waned, according to the times. After the Second World War, for example, the popularity of refrigerators and freezers put the lid on canning for awhile.

Today, original versions in different sizes and colours are prized collectibles. The most rare, the “Van Vliet Improved Jar” made in the 1880s, is worth a reported $23,500 (U.S.).

The Mason jar is enjoying another resurgence, thanks to pandemic gardeners with bumper crops, food supply issues and rising prices. But it’s also valued for its versatility, with uses that include tiny terrariums, vases, drinking glasses, crafter’s creations and job jars.

The multi-use Mason even starred in an episode of CBC’s “Baroness Von Sketch Show,” when an office worker (Jennifer Whalen) showed her co-worker (Aurora Browne) all the things she puts in them, from liquified “salad” to pet fish.

Canadian blues band Wide Mouth Mason named themselves after their drink receptacles in a “seedy bar” one night, band member Safwan Javed explains on their website. The raised words “wide mouth mason” on the jar’s side reminded him of Louisiana musician Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown.

In 1999, Canadian artist Mary Pratt injected jars with a sparkle of October light in her painting called “Jelly Shelf,” which Canada Post gave a stamp of approval in 2007.

For Sigglekow, the secret to catching the sun in a jar is using the freshest ingredients possible by “chasing the season.” https://www.instagram.com/joannesurbanpantry/?hl=en

But she missed the mark on one occasion when eight bushels of Bartlett pears destined to become 200 jars of jam for wedding favours refused to co-operate.

“I was literally waiting for them to ripen, doing small batches right up to the day before,” she recalled, laughing.

Sigglekow uses “thousands” of jars a year in every size from 125 millilitres for jam and jelly to 1.9 litres for pickles. Her wares are sold locally at bakeries, Tatsu’s Bread and The Bread Essentials, and both the Humber Bay Shores and Sorauren farmers’ markets.

For novice preservers, the self-described “food science nerd” recommends learning the how-tos on the websites of Healthy Canning and the National Center for Home Food Preservation, and by using trusted recipes.

“You have everything in your kitchen you need to can,” she urges. “Don’t be afraid of it.”

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