Topic: RD 792836 – frosted green uranium glass powder bottle – registrations details?

[agincourt17]

Recently sold on eBay, a frosted green uranium glass bottle in the shape of  a stylised chrysanthemum head or spider’s web, which would most probably have been a talcum powder bottle. It has a screw on brass lid with a nozzle shaped top, which rotates on the lid, presumably originally it would act as an opener. Possibly the metal lid should have a mesh inner and some sort of open/shut mechanism but unfortunately these are missing. There is also a wider thread on the neck of the bottle so it probably had another screw on lid which fitted over the existing one. It has the Registered Design no. 792836 relief moulded on the base. It measures 5.25" / 13.5cm high.

Not sure if it originally was a retail powder container which is now missing a label or whether it was simply an aftermarket container for other brands of loose talc.

The RD number is a bit of a mystery (though it would have been allocated sometime in May 1934). RD 792836 is not listed on http://www.great-glass.co.uk/glass%20notes/regnos09.htm , but I know the list is somewhat edited (especially for bottle and import agents’ registrations). Is RD 792836 in the Blue Book, please?

I suppose there is the possibility that the seller has misread the number – RD 792736 was registered by Jules Lang & Son on 11 May 1934, and RD 792896 by Sowerby on 18 May 1934.

Comments or suggestions, please.


(Permission for the re-use of this image granted by bengeworth-crew)

[Anne]

Not in the Blue Book Fred. I can't find the RD number in any of the usual glass resources either. It's s shame the seller didn't show a picture of the number itself... is it worth asking if they do have one?

[Bernard C]

Fred and Anne,

...   Not sure if it originally was a retail powder container which is now missing a label or whether it was simply an aftermarket container for other brands of loose talc.   ...

Definitely missing its label, which would have had a lovely Art Deco design saying something like "Talc de Charlotte" or some other spidery name in bad French.

In my experience by far the most usual explanation for a missing registration in Thompson and the blue book (other than Thompson's elimination of obviously commercial registrations in the period 1884 to February 1908) is that the registration was not Class III (Glass).

Bernard C.