Glass Message Board
Glass Discussion & Research. NO IDENTIFICATION REQUESTS here please. => British & Irish Glass => Topic started by: Baked_Beans on September 23, 2012, 02:22:36 PM
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I found this today ...I hoping its Nailsea window glass . Not sure what it is... could be a pestle for a Pharmacy window display perhaps ! It's 17 1/4 inches long ! Thanks for having a look ;)
I'm on a Nailsea glass hunt at the moment and I'm determined to find a piece ::)
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More likely an apprentice march frigger. To thin for such a long pestle!
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I am still looking for a DODO sure i heard one the other night . ::)
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Thanks very much Frank !
Pestle was the only description I could muster after racking my brains ??? ! I didn't have a clue ::)
That would explain it !
John there's a right DoDo here in Bristol :-[
I'm just off to grind a few spices ;D
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A Pipe tamper for those told to keep away from tobacco , yuk .
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JP, not a pipe tamper at 17¾-in long! More like the thing to stuff cannonballs down the barrel! ;D
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I have a pair of old knitting needles bought in the vicinity of Nailsea
slightly bluey green glass, full of millions of very stretched tiny bubbles.
m
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might need a larger version of one of these to go with it.
http://www.toycannons.ray-vin.com/carbide/artlgame/glasscannon.htm
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http://www.antiques-art-collectibles.com/collectible/novelty_glass.htm
Can't legislate for the accuracy of this article but it's quite nice reading.
m
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Hmm, the first sentence is rather strange:
"Novelty items in glass, known as friggers or as Nausea glass"
This indicates the article was originally scanned and then OCR'ed, but it didn't interpret it correctly. Or perhaps the glass was feeling poorly...
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oh dear. I've no idea what you mean about 'originally scanned and ocr'd' - is that a bad thing, is it plagiarism?
m
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Possibly not. OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition and is the process where a program can interpret printed text and convert it to standard ASCII (computer) characters. Naturally, old texts can be a little difficult to convert sometimes and in this case it would appear that the 'il' in Nailsea got interpreted as a 'u' - situations like this in OCR text are quite a common occurrence.
There are also a lot of Print-on-Demand books that are OCR-ed from out of copyright books. Quite often the result is dreadful - often intelligible - so it is worth steering clear of these!
EDITED to add: And there is always the possibility of some really embarrassing mis-steaks!
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The knitting needles look remarkably like those on page 69 (plate 71) of Keith Vincent's book 'Nailsea Glass' (all photos in black & white sadly) .....I think examples are on display at Clevedon Court...(I have yet to visit) . The needles are 12 inches in length , how long are yours, m ? This frigger could be a knitting needle in the making with an elongated knoblet on the head of the needle which would make a nice batton/pipe-tamper :P/cannon-ball-rammer :-X/pestle <---- ???, for an apprentice march :-*
I think , according to the ladies I met in Nailsea, that the light green colour with a tinge of blue is the colour of Nailsea window glass . Please see this topic ...
http://www.glassmessages.com/index.php/topic,49315.0.html
It's quite distinctive and easily recognisable , apparently.
Ta very much, Mike.
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my knitting needles are 10 1/4" long exactly :)
m
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Another suggestion for curious objects. In days of old it was customary to hang a glass ball in a corner of the room to keep it clear of flies. If you go to South America you will find jn many places they use plastic bags fillled with water - and I have yet to find anyone who could explain why this works, or how. But apparently it does.
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Mike — My first thought, with that complicated shape at the other end, was a bell clapper. Probably, as Frank suggested, part of an apprentice march frigger. Don't assume that this giant bell wasn't functional, as, after reading in Strange & Rare about a 9" glass cannon (another apprentice march frigger) that had signs of actually being fired, anything is possible.
Full length glass clappers are known — Walsh bell clappers are like this. See Reynolds fig.43.
There must have been prizes awarded for the best of these apprentice march friggers, so somewhere there must be records of these prizes. I wonder if there's an article on this in one of the glass journals. Does anyone know?
Bernard C. 8)
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Thanks very much Bernard , I will have to look up fig 43 !! from the library.
I went to the Bristol museum today to look at their Nailsea glass collection and I'm pretty certain the colour matches Nailsea window glass....I've posted some photos on my other thread. (see link above).
A bell clapper seems highly plausible ! ...I wonder what happened to the bell.... ? :)
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Keith has all the bells ;D but I don't think one that big.
m
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Mike — Apologies, I picked up on Frank's "apprentice march friggers" earlier without proper consideration. Apprentices were likely to have been involved in glassmakers' processions, but Hajdamach I chapter 16 makes it clear that experienced master craftsmen were showing off their skills. I shouldn't have mentioned apprentices.
... I wonder what happened to the bell.... ?
Obvious really. Of course it was clappered out! ;D
Bernard C. 8)
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Apologies for the throwing in the term apprentice! Hadjamach on page 380 refers to the many reports of such processions.
Google provides some nice tidbits....
LINK (http://books.google.fr/books?id=QGQOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA43&lpg=PA43&dq=glassmakers+procession&source=bl&ots=x4lRfIMZQf&sig=fI_o6ku5M11cqK7K106Q6Lh0Px8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=X7RyUOGYLYW70QWrkIGwCw&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=glassmakers%20procession&f=false)
LINK 2 (http://books.google.fr/books?id=laWX3BnLENgC&pg=PA32&lpg=PA32&dq=glassmakers+procession&source=bl&ots=sONOr-uLJJ&sig=-y6Cw8F6kyy5JXLSu9brTBbQ8eE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=X7RyUOGYLYW70QWrkIGwCw&ved=0CDoQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=glassmakers%20procession&f=false)
So the possibility of a study having been done is likely!
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quote................."In days of old it was customary to hang a glass ball in a corner of the room to keep it clear of flies. If you go to South America you will find jn many places they use plastic bags fillled with water - and I have yet to find anyone who could explain why this works, or how. But apparently it does."
As we all know, flies circle endlessly around the light fitting which hangs from the ceiling in the centre of the room. By hanging the glass ball in the corner of the room the flies become confused, feel they are not the centre of attention and leave the premises immediately ;)
I don't know if someone has already mentioned the walking sticks and sickness/germs habit, but............going back to the friggers - walking sticks in particular - and the superstitious would hang one of these on the wall with the idea that it would attract any germs in the house. Each morning the stick was cleaned, thus removing any germs and keeping the occupiers free from sickness.
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I've got a stinking cold at the moment ....so this glass bulbous rod isn't working. >:( ??? I'm not going to swat flies with it either in my state (not that we have a fly problem right now ;)). I will try the plastic bag filled with water next Summer (if we have one) :)
Bernard , what a shame if the bell was tried for the first time and it all ended in a pile of shards/tiny cullet ! :'(
I'm reading Hajdamach (British Glass , 1800-1914, pub. Antique Collectors Club) from cover-to-cover right now and have just got halfway through . It is the best book I have ever read on glass and I just find it impossible to put it down... I have learnt so much !
If there are smaller clappers that look like this one, than it can only be a clapper for a large glass bell. It would be great to find a picture of one somewhere.....it might be worth having a replica made , using this as a clapper, if a pic. could be found :)
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... it might be worth having a replica made, using this as a clapper, if a pic. could be found
If you can actually find a glassmaker who would be willing to assist in this adventure, your main problem might be the design of the clapper suspension device inside the bell.
Bernard C. 8)
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It really would be a highly ambitious project to say the least ! As you say I can't imagine how the clapper would have been attached .
It would be good to find an example of any sized glass bell , with a clapper of this design, to see how it was done .