Click image for gallery with four additional views.
This is an exact match to the Dunhill "Prong" Ash Tray discussed
here, except that it's in Sea Green, and is narrower and taller. It is the same shape, and matches on both bubble counts and the distribution of irregularities in the bubbles, so was probably also made by Harry Dyer during the 1950s. It was finished with a neatly and centrally ground out and polished pontil.
Subsequently it was expertly acid-etched, or, much more likely, sandblasted with this Deco Flying B logo, filled in with gold paint, probably by a sandblasting specialist rather than at Whitefriars' Wealdstone factory. The most likely contender was the London Sandblast Decorative Glass Wks., Ltd., Burdett Road, London E.3, apparently market leaders at this time, at least in the South East, who specialised in
Signs, Facias & Advertising Novelties. Note the similarity of the gold paint to that used on their advertising paperweights.
Now for the problem. Checking with John Forde's excellent and comprehensive mascot website,
http://www.mascot-mania.co.uk reveals fifteen to twenty variants of the Bentley Winged B logo, many as radiator caps from the time when motometers were being replaced by dashboard mounted temperature guages. Unfortunately none of these are as wildly Deco as that on this ash tray. I checked for other possible firms, but none of Bedford, BSA, Bond, &c., had logos that were even close to a Winged B. So it
has to be Bentley. So where did this design come from?
Bernard C.
Topic: Whitefriars Bentley? Ash Tray (Read 7482 times)
