Topic: Blue-green Stubby Decanter origins - uranium glass

[furrymischief]

Can someone help me identify this decanter, please?  When I bought it, I imagined it to be from the 50s with its dull blue-green colour, chipped & probably corroded but OK for the kitchen once smoothed down.  I was at  the 3 for a pound boot stall.  I like glass to use & grabbed this to make up my trio, although it really isn't my glass style.  However, when I pulled it out into the daylight to show a friend, lo!  I beheld fluorescence  :mrgreen: despite the cloudy day & I started to like it more.

The lower part of this almost square decanter is ~3.25" x 3.5".  The neck appears fixed on with a blob of glass.  Every corner and angle of the base has been chamfered.  The aperture is 1.5" & the diameter over the aperture is 2.5".  The stopper is hexagonal & 2" in diameter.  Overall it is 3" in length & hollow.  The base has a polished pontil & extensive mossing.  It has a sort of northern European look to me & I'm much more old English & Depression.

Although scratched now, the whole was obviously extremely smooth & highly polished.  I am amazed & pleased to discover the inside is just dirty & algified.  Pics taken after a superficial wash.  As it fluoresces so strongly, I can't wait to show it off  in the garden on a sunny day.  It weighs 850g. I'd love to know of its origins.

[Lustrousstone]

It's definitely uranium glass, which probably makes it about 1930s and I would probably agree on Northern Europe - Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Germany, etc., but probably not England. Sizewise it sounds like a cologne bottle for a man's set rather than for a lady. Too small for Schnapps I think. Nice one - it could come and live at my house 

[furrymischief]

Thanks for that info.  It is pleasing to think I got the geographical location vaguely right!  It looks like something from another planet in the sun . I did wonder about toiletries but decided that the inch & a half wide aperture precluded that because even a man's fingers aren't so wide.  Usually  . Hmmm.  I suppose it could have been for bath stuff.   Would a decanter have been made for something like that?

[Lustrousstone]

It's probably for cologne or hair oil, something poured into the palm of the hands

[Ivo]

I would not be so sure of anything. I've had an open salt in the same style of panel cutting in a matching colour which turned out to be Molyneux & Webb from the 1860s.  The decanter may have been part of a cellar - a (lockable) wooden box with decanter and glasses - which explains the shape.

[furrymischief]

How interesting, Ivo.  Was yours coloured with uranium?

[Ivo]

yes it looked innocuous enough but started screaming as soon as you let the UV lamp loose.  VERY Uranium, and very modern looking.  Unfortunately it perished in the incident - no I do not care to discuss it - and I do not even have a photograph.

[furrymischief]

Even more interesting - if not outright fascinating.  You have my deepest sympathy for your loss ...