Topic: date cane with an I in the middle?

[Nadine]

Hello everybody,

after studying this thread I realized, that I am the "German seller" who get a message from Simone  :lol:  :oops:

Here are the pictures of the weight, which I sell on ebay.com at the moment:

http://www.paperweights24.de/bilder/caithwhiteproto/index.html

I´ve bought this weight many years ago at the Cambridge Glassfair from a paperweight-dealer, who told me, he got this weight from a Caithness employeer. The weight was not polished and in a really bad condition. It had the top window, but this window also was not polished, so that it was not possible to see the canes clearly.
I let the weight repolish in the Birmingham area and get it back in this fantastic condition.

As all the canes, except the Monk, was very similar to the well known Caitness Canes from the 1980´s I never thought it was a fake and thought the dealer was right, that it will be a prototype.

Now it seems, that this weight is a real Caithness/Whitefriars made by John Deacons.

Please tell me, if I´m wrong with my oppinion.

All the best
Nadine

[KevinH]

Ray let us know that the 1982 cane we have discussed was

found in the book "paperweight signature canes by Andrew H Dohan"

And Frank commented:

No one else checked that

I admit it - guilty as charged I think I was swayed by a) the views expressed in the course of this message and b) the fact that this particular cane is seemingly not well known.

So, well done Ray, for doing a more thorough job than me on thumbing through the books.

But there's more that can now be added to this ...

Nadine's weight is very recognisable in having canes which, as she says, are known in other Caithness weights from [at least] the 1980s. But those same canes are also known in the weights from Edinburgh Crystal - which is not surprising as those weights were made at Caithness Glass.

Not only that, those same canes are a regular feature in St Kilda weights (having the StK signature cane) which were made by John Deacons during his Jay Glass years. This is also not surprising as the general canes were also made by John Deacons (a point that John confirmed to me at the Perth Conference last year).

So the tie-in of John's production of the 1982 Whitefriars cane for Caithness and the general canes used for his StK weights and the same canes being used for Edinburgh Crytsal weights is now clear.

Also, it is clear that the general canes (with the star centre in a thick rimmed cog sleeve) are very similar to original Whitefriars (pre-Caithness) canes that were often included in their weights. The original Whitefriars canes had six-point stars (and perhaps five-point?) and the outer sleeve was smooth or "wavy" but not noticeably "cogged" as in John Deacons' versions. However, at a distance, the canes all look very similar, which may have been a deliberate design consideration.

But ... there is still an outstanding question ...

The information from the Dohan book about the connection with the Caithness Glass "Whitefriars" weights seems reasonable. So why is it that the Charlton Caithnesss Paperweights book does not include any 1982 Whitefriars weights that look like the ones we have seen here? Maybe these weights (the "Whitefriars miniatures" that Dohan mentions) were all "experimental" and never made it to the regular production?

If that's true, then can we say that these are even rarer than has already been suggested? On the other hand, it has been said that a number of these have been apprearing on eBay recently, so perhaps they are not so rare after all - but if there are so many (whatever the actual number may be) why would that be, if they were just "experimental" ones?

Hmmm. Are we really at the end of all this?

And for extra info ... a maker by the name of Robert Wetzel (not well known in paperweight circles) visited Scotland and John Deacons helped in producing a signature "RW" and 1985 date cane - with different colours for each numeral. This info is also from Dohan''s Signature Cane book. So there is yet another example of a multi-coloured date cane with the John Deacons influence.

[ALLAN]

Hi,
   Well ,this has just proved that my memory is officially RUBBISH(in some instances anyway ),I did not recognise the cane untill Nadines pic,I mean, I only sat and helped set up hundreds of them after all.There were a lot made and John,Harry,myself with the help of our two helpers Caroline and George,not to mention Archie on the facetting, were kept quite busy doing them.Eventually around the time when Andy Lawson left Perthshire paperweights to join Caithness,they started making them themselves and we continued to cut them untill Jay Glass folded in early 1983.This has been a nice jog of my memory :lol: .
      Allan

[Frank]

Does anyone know how many of these with the different coloured numbers in the signature were made?

[Frank]

Example now on SG link

[alpha]

The slide of the muli-color date cane that is in my book was given to me by Colin Terris, as was the information related in the text.

[Frank]

Thanks Andy, was there more than one cane?

[alpha]

Not sure what you mean Frank. Colin provided me with many slides at the time - mostly of the "Royals" initial canes. The 1982 date cane illustrated in my book in the Deacons section was the only "multi-colored" one that he sent - if that is what you meant.

[Frank]

Sorry was not explicit - I meant was there only one multi-coloured date cane made. I presume one would have been ample for a year cane. But you never know for sure. Your answer would tend to confirm this.