Topic: John Derbyshire Glass vase 1876

[JC]

This item has the lozenge mark on the base dating it 28th April 1876 It also has John Derbyshire's  trademark logo JD superimposed on an Anchor on the base.I know that the company commenced in 1873 and changed names in 1876.
I have been calling this item a vase, but the longer I look at it, the more I am convincing myself its not.The rim around the top, has me thinking maybe this would  have had a lid.Does anyone know if this is correct and if so for what purpose was it used?Was there a pattern name?
It stands 6 inches high
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~gjcheers/derbyshirevase07.jpg

[Tony H]

Hi JC
A very nice find, I have Jenny Thompson The Identification of English Pressed Glass 1842-1908.

In this book your vase is James Derbyshire & Sons, Trentham St, Chester Road, Hulme  Reg No 305541 28th November 1876 Parcel No 10
There is no writen discription, but there is a line drawing of the vase, this is a match for your piece, there is no lid.

Hope this is of some help to you.

Tony H.

[JC]

Thanks Tony, that is a big help and much appreciated. I bought it thinking it was a vase, showed it off calling it a vase and then started to write a description for it and started to wonder.
They say you should always go with your first impressions, but its amazing at how many times we end up questioning ourselves and then change our minds back and forth  LOL..yes its a vase..no its not ..yes it is..  no..yes LOL. Thanks again.
Julie

[Bernard C]

Julie & Tony — Thompson pp41/42 notes the registration description of this vase as a spell glass.   This is probably not derived from spall, an early type of match with a sulphur head, as by 1876 vestas or ordinary non-safety matches were in common use.    Therefore it must be a mis-spelling or a local Manchester spelling of spill, a strip of paper or wood used for transferring a flame from one place to another.

We often forget today that in 1876 there was always a need for flame, for lighting candles, oil lamps, gas lights, cigars and pipes.   Matches were then more expensive than today in real terms, so spills were the solution. A filled spill glass or vase at each side of the fireplace or mantelpiece would have been a common sight, probably more frequently seen in the working class home than a flower vase.   I can recall as a boy in the 1950s at my grandparents' terraced house in Swindon (24 Cheney Manor Road) being given the job of recycling newspaper in two ways, neatly torn into rectangles to go on the hook in the outside privy, and rolled into tight spills, then rolled into a loose roll to serve as a firelighter, with one long end tucked through to hold it together and protruding for use as a spill.   Very little was ever thrown away there, everything organic went on the compost heap, and even tin cans were strung up as noisy bird-scarers on Granddad's highly productive allotment.   There was always a bucket and shovel on standby in case a horse left something precious in the road outside — too good for the allotment vegetables, that went on his prize-winning chrysanthemums!

Any scrap timber could easily be made into spills using a spill plane.  I bought an antique one some years ago at a Towcester racecourse antiques market.   It is a wooden framed plane, looking rather like an old moulding plane, except that it looks a little strange.   It produces very tight spirals, slightly narrower than a pencil.

If you want some to add authenticity to your spill vase, they are available on the Internet, made using a genuine old spill plane.

Bernard C.  

ps — for the unfamiliar, Towcester is pronounced Toaster.

[Anne]

Bernard, just in case it helps, as a child we always called them spells not spills. I was brought up in Radcliffe (just north of Manchester) so it maybe a dialect thing?

Added after a Google search:

Spell \Spell\, n. [OE. speld, AS. speld a spill to light a candle with; akin to D. speld a pin, OD. spelle, G. spalten to split, OHG. spaltan, MHG. spelte a splinter, Icel. spjald a square tablet, Goth. spilda a writing tablet. Cf. Spillsplinter, roll of paper, Spell to tell the letters of.]

A spelk, or splinter. [Obs.]

--Holland. [1913 Webster]

Source: The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44
 

[Bernard C]

Anne — thanks for confirming that I was on the right lines.

Unfortunately I have a Chambers 20th Century Dictionary, impressive in weight, but not in content.   It completely lacks marver, noun or verb, describes codswallop as origin unknown — not surprisingly, as it would have helped if they had spelled it correctly, only mentions spall in connection with chips of rock, with no mention of flint, fire or early matches, and categorically denies any connection between spell and spill.

It does not take more than a few years to realise that some of the entries or non-entries in Chambers are a load of coddswallop!   What really hurts is that about ten years ago I missed out on a bargain copy of the two volume tiny print version of the OED, the one that came with a powerful magnifying glass.

If you want to pencil in the correction, Hiram Codd of Camberwell patented his initial design in November 1870, with further patents subsequently improving the design, until his September 1872 patent produced the design with which we are all familiar, with the marble confined to its own chamber.   Coddswallop / Codd's wallop is simply a derogatory term used by strong beer drinkers to describe the contents of Codd bottles.

Bernard C.  

[KevinH]

Yes, there are interesting variations in various dictionaries.

Note that the spelling below has only one "d". Was there an earlier version of the word spelled as "coddswallop" or even as two separate words? I have no idea where the OED date 1875 came from - see below.

Concise Oxford English, Tenth Edition, 2001:

Codswallop - n. Brit. Informal nonsense.
- ORIGIN 1960s: origin uncertain, but perh. named after Hiram Codd, who invented a bottle for fizzy drinks (1875).

And for Spill etc.:

Spell (4) - n. a splinter of wood
- ORIGIN ME: perh. a var. of obs. speld 'chip, splinter'.

Spill (2) - n. a thin strip of wood or paper used for lighting a fire, pipe, etc.
- ORIGIN ME: obscurely related to SPILE.

Spile n. - 1.  a small wooden peg or spigot ...
- ORIGIN C16: from MDu., Mid. Low Ger., 'wooden peg'

Isn't language fun.  

And while I'm on the subject, why do so many people not understand the proper use of an apostrophe in the written form of: "it's"? It's quite simple to remember - it's only used if it's a shortened version of 'it is' or 'it has'.  (So says an English guy who almost failed the basic school English Language examination)  :roll:

[Frank]

American English - Websters Encyclopedic 1994

SPILL a roll or cone of paper serving as a container. From ME spille 'wooden splinter'

Its  :x a good idea to allow language to evolve els we wil al sound de same. Shorter words save trees :lol:

[Bernard C]

Kevin — I was, perhaps, a little hard on Chambers re the spelling.   Most new words started life in the spoken language, with their first appearances in print much later, and often with considerable variation in spelling.   See Bryson Made in America for a concentrated and fascinating discussion on this.

Hiram Codd was a prolific patentor of designs, possibly not just limited to his famous bottle.   I have no doubt that there was a Codd patent of 1875 as the OED suggests, but it was the September 1872 patent that produced the bottle design we all recognise today.   Alan Cox, in his Northamptonshire Froth & Fizz, claims that around 700–800 patents for pop bottle closures were taken out during the period 1871–1885.   I doubt whether even the most enthusiastic OED researcher would have examined them all.   The only major improvement to the Codd bottle was the twin indentations to retain the stopper, developed by Barnett & Foster in the 1890s.

Bernard C.