Topic: piano insulators

[Bernard C]

...   Silber and Flemming quote colours of puce/amber/blue/canary/green and flint (perhaps their canary was uranium)  -  but if you want a reall exotic example then there is apparently one made in the shape of a Mammoth's foot, complete with hairy textured surface.

Paul — "Canary" is the only unambiguous term for uranium yellow, with a extremely long provenance throughout the English speaking world.   "Yellow" might not be uranium.   "Vaseline" suffers from never quite being sure whether you mean yellow, green, or something in between, and it's very modern collectors' terminology by comparison.    You will also frequently meet "canary opalescent".

The mammoth's foot is a really magnificent piece of glass.   I've been fortunate to have one through my hands.   There's a photograph in Notley, Raymond, Popular Glass of the 19th & 20th Centuries, Miller's, 2000.

Bernard C.  

[Paul S.]

thanks to all for their contributions - I'm going into town later today looking for wealthy Americans and people from down under

Canary opalescent sounds so good you could almost eat it, but I would like a puce one.     Is it my imagination, or is puce an uncommon colour in pressed glass?
thanks, and yes, I've now seen the Mammoth's foot example in the book - undoubtedly rare, and can only hope you did well with it Bernard.

I think we forget very easily (especially with our obsession with glass that 'glows') that in the C19 and well into the C20, people had no conception of what uranium glass really was (and ignorant of its reaction to u.v., obviously).   They saw it simply as a canary or oily yellowish green coloured glass which nonethless had odd properties in morning sunlight or failing daylight, and would never have called it uranium glass anyway.         This apparently, was one of the reasons that Raymond Slack omitted all reference to the word uranium, specifically, in his book.

[Bernard C]

James Measell has just kindly reminded me that the mammoth's foot piano insulator carries the John Derbyshire TM and a registration lozenge.   Checking Jenny Thompson, I found my margin note opposite the registration for 12 May 1874.   Derbyshire registered another in 1873, but this earlier one is a mystery to me.

Thanks, James.

Bernard C. 

[stew2u2]

jusy sold one on ebay nice colour. bought it at a car boot 50p they thought it was an ashtray.

[neilh]

I have an image of the John Derbyshire 1874 piano foot on my website

http://sites.google.com/site/molwebbhistory/Home/registered-designs/derbyshire-brothers-designs-by-date/derbyshire-brothers-1873-1874

JD produced 3 registered piano feet, Percival & Vickers did 2, another one from Ker & Webb and one from Burtles & Tate also. Drop me an email via the website if you wish to see any of the original design sketches.

[Paul S.]

thanks all - especially Neil - and the Mammoth's foot is a uranium example into the bargain!  -  will come back to this thread later today.

[chrissyd1]

My parents were given a green set of thses when I was a kid. I think that was the beginning of my glass love affair. I wish they had kept them.

[Ivo]

I researched the functionality of piano feet some time ago and ran into a scientific report proving that glass and aluminium actually fortify vibrations in stead of dampening them.

[Anne Tique]

I've got them here in the house with the cast iron radiators resting on them  ... the house dates from 1870, bought it 14 years ago and they were already there.

[Ivo]

I've got them here in the house with the cast iron radiators resting on them  ... the house dates from 1870, bought it 14 years ago and they were already there.

Those would have been made to rest stoves on. Iron stoves needed to be isolated or else burn through the floor. #nofunifanagafallsonyou