Topic: A familiar topic : Caithness Latticinio or another (Ysart) hand?

[cfosterk]

Picked this up today and I thought the design looked familiar and Scottish in origin. Possibly an unsigned example of CT60 made by Willie Manson at Caithness in 1976. Now I'm back home checking the Charlton guide and online examples and I'm puzzled.

I know there was an earlier thread that discussed a 'Latticinio' type paperweight. I'll trawl through the posts.....

http://img440.imageshack.us/i/dscn0959b.jpg/
http://img834.imageshack.us/i/dscn0955g.jpg/
http://img691.imageshack.us/i/dscn0953u.jpg/
http://img835.imageshack.us/i/dscn0956j.jpg/
http://img831.imageshack.us/i/dscn0958h.jpg/

Base is unusual, its an almost transparent sodden snow inset with latticinio. And the blue cane comprises an eight point star cane surrounded by 9 heart silhouette canes.

The central cane reminds me of Perthshire pieces. Could someone at Perthshire have made this type of paperweight as a prototype? Or perhaps a test piece by the training officer at Caithness (wishful thinking kicking in....)

Any ideas??

[KevinH]

I vote for one of Willie Manson's from his unlimited editions "Scotia Range", 1980/1. The catalogue pages shown in John Simmonds' book Paperweights From Great Britain, page 150 has an example and it has the alternate cane structure in the circle around the central cane.

If I am correct, and it is from the Scotia Range, then the name of the weight is "Satin Chain", not "Latticino". And it probably originally had a "Scotia" label on the base.

As for the "heart cane", maybe it is a heart. But it could also be a happy coincidence formed from the way the cane was affected during working of the weight. Many regular round millefiori canes gets "squashed" into a sort of "heart" shape. The effect is also apparent in the central cane in this weight where the orange-coated element at the 4 o'clock position in photo dscn0959b also looks to have a "heart" inner section.

If the ground had been clear instead of filigree, the actual form of the canes could have been easily seen through the base as they do not get distorted very much at that end.

[cfosterk]

I'm an ignoramus on Willie Mansons own work - I have some examples but know very little about the Scotia range.

Will look into this further as would be delighted with a Mansons attribution - my third favorite maker!

The 'heart' canes, far from being a distortion, seem to be uniform throughout - I'm afraid my skills with a camera border on the incompetent.....