Topic: Molineaux Webb EAPG-style spiky lacy plate

[neilh]

I am researching the story of early Manchester pressed glass but could do with a little feedback from anyone who knows a bit about EAPG, Sandwich glass, or the work of Ruth Webb Lee, hence posting this on the main board in case anybody who knows about this area wants to chip in.

What we have here is an image from the Molineaux Webb pressed glass catalogue of plate number 32, and the real thing which I found at an antiques fair earlier this year. Such plates are known as lacy style and commonly they all get wrongly lumped together as being American.

Molineaux Webb produced a dozen or so plates in this style, and I am guessing this design dates to the mid 1840s, though they produced it for many decades afterwards and I suspect this pressing is some time after the design was done, as it's in such good condition. Percival Vickers also produced a couple of lacy plates.

I am aware that Ruth Webb Lee misidentified a number of these plates as Amercian, so if you've seen this one in her books, let me know.

[flying free]

Neil, I've come across something you might already know about but if not, it 'might' be helpful?

It's a collection of glass in the Currier Museum in the States.  There's a fairly large collection of pressed glass plates starting from hopefully this linked page:
https://collections.currier.org/objects-1/portfolio?records=50&query=mfs%20all%20%22glass%22&sort=9&page=11

It goes on for pages - just click next button on the right hand side bottom.

m

[neilh]

Thanks, a lot of American cup plates there. The best reference remains the book by Ruth Webb Lee. Nearly a century old now but has the advantage of being written when a lot more examples must have been circulating. You sometimes get the odd rogue European plate snarled up in these collections, and there's one or two I'd quibble with in your link which they have down as unattributed American.

[flying free]

To be honest there are quite a few I'd quibble with (not lacy plates but other items).
However, that said, there are many which just state unidentified or attributed to and I guess that's because they don't actually have a concrete id.  Which is fair enough.

[cagney]

  Still the best book on the on the subject is "American Glass Cup Plates" by Ruth Webb Lee and James H. Rose, 1948. Probably 300+photographs. Later editions also. I do not see your particular plate design there. Although, chapter XXV, European plates, does show one with the same spikey serrations  [edge design] in a different pattern. Some text provided herehttps://pressglas-korrespondenz.de/aktuelles/pdf/pk-2008-3w-lee-rose-teller-sandwich.pdf Scroll down to chapterXXV. Specifically no. 857.