Topic: E.Varnish mercury glass with embossed seal, circa 1849

[drewfind]

this is the base

[KevinH]

Hi Andrew,

I have sent you an email about the resizing of images but I see that you have succeeded with your pics ... well done.

I have merged your second thread with the first and changed "lozenge" in the initial heading to "embossed seal".

[flying free]

really difficult to tell but the other way up i.e. as per your base photo, the initials look like B3 or possibly B B3

[drewfind]

I think it is an old script E & co , not E&E, I will try and get a better pic

[drewfind]

The new pic will have to wait until I collect it , sorry, we have 2 of the same pic

[KevinH]

I will add some summary info soon, covering the Christie's South Kensington sale of "The Parkington Collection" 1997/8 in which a good number of "mercury glass" items, in several colours, were included, some of which attained twice the upper estimate.

[Paul S.]

I suppose one might then say  ..................   Mercury Rising                 Don't know that auction house Kevin [ * ] 

I meant to add earlier  ................   looking in Leslie Jackson, there's nothing in the index mentioning this type of glass coming from James Powell mid C19, although authors other than Jackson were responsible for the essays for that period.

[ * ] Spelling error corrected after reporting myself to myself. 

[drewfind]

Hi Kevin,The Christies info would be appreciated, many thanks

Hi Paul, I have had a look at the archives at the V&A, and they attribute the inventors as Halewood and Varnish, with James Powell as the manufacturers

[Paul S.]

Andrew, can you explain exactly what it is that you have been looking at in the museum, please.    Do they provide a source of provenance for this attribution?               They may well have discovered some important piece of historic documentation for this assertion.
Halewood and Varnish we know of -  as the patent holder/inventor - they are well documented, but as far as I understand they were not manufacturers.

[flying free]

ah, I can't see that even if I turn it the other way up but that might be because the script is mirroring/reflecting a second set of script off the internal layer of glass perhaps?