Glass Discussion & Research. NO IDENTIFICATION REQUESTS here please. > British & Irish Glass
Hatpin tray(?) Reg. by John Short Downing
Anne E.B.:
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y195/glassie/hatpintray003.jpg
Larger view.
http://glassgallery.yobunny.org.uk/displayimage.php?pos=-8565
Smaller gallery view.
Presumably this is a hatpin dish or tray, as it came with some pretty lethal looking rusty hatpins. It has a diamond registration lozenge as follows: Top fig. 24: Centre right: the letter L. Bottom: the letter H. Centre left: fig. 2. Looking on 1st.glassman's excellent lozenge translator, this glass design parcel number 2 was registered on 24th April 1882 by John Short Downing, Birmingham. I've never heard of them and cannot find anything about them at all. Does anyone know anything about them? And, can anyone confirm that it is in fact a hatpin tray. (Bernard, if you are lookiing in).
TIA
Anne
Lustrousstone:
I think it might be a pen tray because of the little rests rather than a hat pin tray. You wouldn't want ink from the nib getting on your handle
Bernard C:
Anne — as Christine said, it's a pen tray. Thompson gives Downing's address as Crown Works, Commercial Street, Birmingham. From memory, Commercial Wharf opened at the beginning of the century, so, by the middle of the century, there was a mix of heavy and light industry well established in the Commercial Street area. So Crown Works could have been a glass works, but, if so, it was one of the last in central Birmingham. I think it more likely that your pen tray was made in the Tyneside, Wearside, or Manchester glassworks.
Anyway, it's not too difficult to check in the Birmingham directories of the time. If you do, remember to treat directory entries with some scepticism — what you are looking for are new and changed entries, which can be regarded as reasonably reliable. As today, it was much less expensive for a directory publisher to buy all his competitors' directories and place a few advertisements in local newspapers requesting information, than to employ people to do the legwork around the streets, knocking on doors. You can sometimes find some wonderfully out-of-date entries!
One classic example is Hobson's Fox-hunting Atlas, which dominated this specialist field for over half a century. The first edition was an almost word for word transcription of an earlier directory onto C & J Walker's county maps, and quite legal, as the directory publisher had not thought it necessary to copyright his publication. It took Hobson about a decade to get his information reasonably up-to-date, and his meets in the correct place on the maps — the whole exercise apparently without the necessity to have ever set foot outside his premises!
Bernard C. 8)
Bernard C:
Anne — Would it be possible to see a close-up of the registration lozenge?
Bernard C. 8)
Anne E.B.:
Thanks everyone for your help ;D
A pen tray it is then :). It has four rests, so presumably would hold four pens, and I'm guessing they'd be wooden ones with nibs.
Bernard - it was really difficult to get a good pic. of the registration lozenge but it seemed to work best when dusted with talc.powder. I'm afraid this is the best image I could get:-
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y195/glassie/lozenge021.jpg
You can just make out the letter H at the bottom.
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