Topic: Green Trumpet Flower

[josordoni]

Another one that has me stumped a bit.

This is a nice large green trumpet flower weight.  Usually I associate this sort of shape with Bohemia, but this one has a nicely polished pontil with a slightly textured outer ring (that I think I have seen before, but I can't think where) and someone has lightly scratched a name and date to the centre.  It is very lightly scratched, I wonder if it might be the original owner's name and the date they acquired it rather than the maker?  it says Al Thorneycroft 1978.  I can't find anything about any glassmaker called Thorneycroft online.

Does anyone have any ideas please?

[tropdevin]

I can't help directly, but can throw a small spanner in the works  .  Signatures can be misleading.

I have several paperweights that would at first sight be classed as Scottish, maybe Willie Manson - but they are all signed Alan Thornton, because I made them on a course that Willie ran.  I am not the only one to make a paperweight or several on a course in the UK (or elsewhere), so there are probably quite a few weights around with 'unknown' signatures.  That is always a possibility worth considering.

Alan

[josordoni]

it's so skinny though Alan, like it was scratched in with the end of a safety pin, although it could be a diamond point I suppose (thinking of how wishy washy my scratching with Lesley's diamond point was at Cambridge). 

My gut feeling is that if it is the maker he is an amateur, but the making of the weight is nice and even and not very amateur...

[KevinH]

A. J. Thorneycroft - according to the very brief details in John Simmonds book, Paperweights From Great Britain 1930-2000, the weights were often signed to the base with a date (e.g. "a J T" "95").

Unfortunately, I know of no other info.

[aa]

Al Thorneycroft was the technician at Middlesex Polytechnic, now Middlesex University, for some considerable time. I don't know the exact dates but he was certainloy there in 1982 and I think until they closed down the hot glass workshop (in the mid-nineties?).

[josordoni]

Oh thank you both!  that is very interesting. 

Just goes to show doesn't it, that even top technicians can make skinny wishy washy scratchy signatures