Topic: Pressed glass crown jar, RD 183953, Alfred Edmund Edwardes, 14 February 1865.

[Paul S.]

Regret I'm not too good at Royalty and connected events in the C19 - so not sure of the potential value of your latest hypothesis   -  but a possibility I suppose.
Thanks for the pic of the uranium crown - real burning image.

I'm still unsure as to how the National Archives pic was sourced - perhaps someone enlisted the help of a professional archivist.       I believe that both Tigerchips and Ivo used used it.

[Baked_Beans]

Cheers Paul ,

Sadly, I think I'm right ...for once .

[David E]

Not entirely sure David what you mean by ....."and I don't think that it can be used past that date" ....   is it the Rd. No., or the design you're suggesting that can't be used.            Sorry if I'm being thick.

Not at all - my explanation was pretty abysmal!  What I meant was that the manufacturer could no longer use the registration lozenge or number after the imposed time limit. So 1870 would have been the last time the lozenge could have been used unless, as you say, it was extended. I think it could still be called a registered design, though. One assumes that after the registration had lapsed anyone could start fabricating their own version?

With regard to the vaselineglass.org link, it is interesting to see the cross to the top still intact. Obviously well looked after! 

[Paul S.]

quote..................."What I meant was that the manufacturer could no longer use the registration lozenge or number after the imposed time limit. So 1870 would have been the last time the lozenge could have been used unless, as you say, it was extended."

Could be wrong David, but don't think that would be the case.                I'm sure that I've seen many pieces carrying Rd. Nos. and diamonds - where the impression was worn and faded - indicating that the piece had been pressed many years after expiry of the allotted 3 or 5 year protection.           Moulds were valuable things, and not items to throw away, just because your Registration period had expired.

Someone else confirm this idea please

[Baked_Beans]

Paul, if you had an expensive , valuable (given the potential revenue from it's output) mould wouldn't you just keep extending it every five years so that the protection was in place over the whole lifetime of the mould ? It would make sense to do so and I don't think it would be that expensive. It certainly isn't expensive to register a design these days .

[David E]

I'm sure that I've seen many pieces carrying Rd. Nos. and diamonds - where the impression was worn and faded - indicating that the piece had been pressed many years after expiry of the allotted 3 or 5 year protection.

That could also mean it was a very popular piece where many pressings were carried out or, where the piece was known to be popular, how many moulds they were using    Impossible to say how many moulds were made, but I doubt it was very many. It also looks and feels to be a very expensive piece of glass, so I imagine there may have only been one or two moulds, and not many pressings.

Mike, a good point, but you have to consider how moulds are made, and why. The base plate on which the registration mark is found may have been a single piece of metal that was engineered separately. In this case, there is a definite seam mark just by the base edge, so it did have its own base plate, which could then have been easily replaced.

In the case of Tye's vase, we have seen quite a few variations of the base, where he did change the base plate fairly often.

[Paul S.]

Must be losing my grip  -  I'd forgotten that we'd previously covered aspects of this issue of period of Registration (2013), so here is an edited extract from something I posted then.........

""For designs Registered after January 1884 i.e. where there is a number only and not a diamond lozenge, then the period of Registration (protection) was for a period of five years, which could be renewed - and indeed many designs were extended, sometimes twice or even thrice (and perhaps for longer even).     

However, for designs Registered between 1842 and 1883 - the whole of the period covered by the diamond lozenge - then the legal protection given by the Board of Trade was for a period of three years only, and extensions appear not to have been an option.         Have to remember that prior to 1839 there was no protection at all for the designs of most materials - and certainly not glass.
There seems to have been an almost arbitrary system of granting protection to the various materials at the beginning of the lozenge period, and it's well worth reading Thompson's comments regarding the Designs Act of 1842.

Registration of designs with the British Board of Trade gave protection only within the U.K., and didn't seem to stop companies outside the U.K. from copying and selling British designs............plagiarism was probably a common problem anywhere.""......

So this is why Kew Register BT 44/7 (the Register for CLASS III, glass only, for all of the diamond years) makes no mention of any designs being extended, and tells us immediately that the design of this 'crown jar' would not have been extended beyond the allotted three years.           I've no idea of the reasoning behind this restriction to three years, but presumably they had second thoughts in 1884, and decided that additional protection was warranted, and so made the change to five years with provision for further periods if that was requested.

It's quite possible that when I get to Kew and locate 183953 in the CLASS III glass Representations book, I may well find myself looking at an identical drawing to that which is showing in this thread, i.e. the drawing submitted for the Pottery CLASS IV Registration.        For simplicity and economy Edwardes may posted a few copies of an identical drawing to the B. of T. and asked that they shove one of each into CLASS 1, III and IV.

I would have thought that Tye's style of mould with separate base plate was very much in the minority  -  most moulds surely were two and three piece hinged forms - that created the complete pressing without the need for additional parts.      However, I am aware that Patricia's book does show a non-Tye mould that has a separate interchangeable base plate.

We've discussed previously the fact that the moulds from some factories were purchased by other houses, and no reason I suppose that a mould carrying a Rd. No. couldn't be used indenfintely - even until the details became illegible, as they often did.

sorry this ended up a bit long-winded 

[Baked_Beans]

Thanks very much indeed Paul for explaining it so well ! It really helps people like me who know so little about this area .

So if you had a mould with a diamond lozenge to the base you were not allowed to use it beyond three years with the lozenge plate still in place. So this puts a complete kibosh on my Golden/Diamond Jubilee theory      

[Lustrousstone]

I don't think you weren't allowed; that's the period of design protection. Whether you continued to use it was irrelevant. It just meant you had no legal comeback if somebody copied your design.

The marks weren't for buyers' benefit but for competitors to see

[Paul S.]

Yes, I'm certain that Lustrousstone is correct  -  I'd just typed a reply making that point, so if people don't object I'll let my words stand without alteration.

hi  -  difficult to say what proportion of moulds had separate bases - the Tye examples did, and maybe there were more than we might think.
I'm not well up on the making of moulds - perhaps most were sand-cast as iron blanks and then cold-cut by hand to create the design.              If you look at the picture in Raymond Slack's book, there is the photograph of the old guy cutting a design into one section of a mould whilst its held in what looks like a purpose made cradle.
Slack's book gives a little information on early moulds and discusses the sort of metals used....iron, brass or gun metal.

But have to correct you on the second part of your post.        I wasn't saying that a mould couldn't be used after the expiry of the three year Registration period  -  presumably it could go on being used for ever almost  -  but rather that at the end of the three years the legal protection ceased, and anyone could copy the design without fear of litigation.

Also, Registration diamonds/lozenges might appear almost anywhere on a piece of glass - feet, stems, inside bowls etc., in fact probably they appear (for pressed glass) on every part except the base, since they were individual details and needed to be cut/pressed separately for each different design.

It's worth quoting Charles Hajdamach's words on this subject......
"Although not exclusive to pressed glass, the diamond registration appears on that range of objects more than any other because of the relative ease of incorporating the mark into the pattern of the design when it was being cut by the mould maker.     On other glass it could be engraved or transfer printed."...........

Would have thought we had people here who had some more in depth knowledge of moulds