Topic: St Louis antique hand cooler?

[cfosterk]

Bought at auction with a scambled paperweight....

Looks authentic, signs of wear and a tiny 'repair' in the form of a mini concave polished area towards the pontil dome.

The spirals to the left are not typically St Louis, but examples of twists to the left do exist. Quite a number of very miniscule bubbles.

I've only seen one illustated example before in Rvelyn Cloaks "Bergstrom" book plate 25.

Any views??

http://img411.imageshack.us/i/dscn0945hw.jpg/
http://img178.imageshack.us/i/dscn0941k.jpg/
http://img826.imageshack.us/i/dscn0942a.jpg/

[tropdevin]

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Hi.  I have seen this item: it did not feel like lead crystal.  I am pretty sure it was made by John Deacons, and think you will find the ribbons match some of his crown weights.

Alan

[cfosterk]

I did consider that when bidding, and therefore the price I paid was modest.

I have about twenty Deacons crowns and the colouration and manufacture is different. I haven't found a match in any of the crowns I have. So perhaps another Scottish company?

The wear isn't consistent with a post 1980's example either - thats why I initially ruled Deacons out.

Its dimensions at 2 7/8" high and 2" diameter are consistent with antique examples. So a realistic copy if of more modern manufacture. But all of the crowns I own by Deacons are exquisitely manufactured with an almost total absence of air bubbles within the design of the piece (although they occasionally appear in the internal clear gather).

The latticcinio is much finer and not as uniformly 'chunky' as you find in a Deacons piece.

There's a 'nipple' at the opposite end to the pontil which I've seen on some antique weights.

So next I have to check out the UV results. Anyone know what Deacons, Perthshire and other factories UV results are??

[KevinH]

Anyone know what Deacons, Perthshire and other factories UV results are??

For my six examples by Perhshire Paperweights:

longwave uv = three fairly bright green, two as a colour that in the past I have called "watery orange", but which other folk might see as "greenish-orange" or as "pinkish" or even as "no fluoresence" and one as "no fluoresence" but might actually be a "watery silver-grey" (this one is a Peter McDougall 1/1 type but very similar to a known design from the later years). I have exmained other peoples' PP weights and "silver-grey" does show under longwave for many later period items.

shortwave uv = all blue except for one which is the 1/1 type mentioned above.

For my eight examples by John Deacons:

longwave uv = all but one are the "watery" (hard-to-describe) colour; the other (a blue overlay) is more of a "silvery grey" in the clear glass

shortwave uv = six are blue and two (both Stk items) are what I call "dusty grey".

Antique French
I don't have any St Louis weights so I can't say what they might show as. But in the past I have put the lights on somebody else's collection of antique French weights and found that they mostly agreed with what was suggested back in the late 60s and mentioned (with cautionary comments) in Hollister, "The Encylopedia of Glass Paperweights". "Peachy-pink" or just "Peach" was said to be the colour for St Louis under longwave uv.

[cfosterk]

A thousand thanks Kevin...

Just starting to use UV rather than rely on gut reaction!!

[alpha]

One of the zanfirico pieces uses what looks like black. Black would not be a color used in an antique piece. I would focus on a more modern time frame maker. Scottish seems very likely.

[paperweights]

Do you have a reason for ruling out modern St. Louis?  They did make hand coolers like this. 

[tropdevin]

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Allan - as far as I know, all the modern ones have a Saint-Louis cane at one end, and are made of lead crystal glass.

Alan

[chopin-liszt]

Slightly off topic, I'm always bemused why egg-shaped pws are described as "hand-coolers".
Egg-shaped things are popular, people LIKE egg-shaped things.
Why aren't they just called egg-shaped?

(hand-cooler sounds horribly pretentious to me, puts me right off a piece and the person trying to flog it... . I suppose it might be because the first time I encountered the phrase it was being used by a seller who was well-known to be dodgy, and it was being used to describe a bit of tat.)

[tropdevin]

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Hi Sue.

These items were popular with the more wealthy Victorian ladies, who had glass or marble eggs to cool their hands so that their palms were not sweaty. I believe that they were used for this purpose before then, but I don't when they were first used for this purpose.  So I think it is an accurate and venerable description, rather than a modern, pretentious affectation.

Alan