Glass Discussion & Research. NO IDENTIFICATION REQUESTS here please. > British & Irish Glass
Breaking News Nailsea / Bristol hat found in charity shop in Bristol for £1.50
Frank:
Not sure which one Smith referred to but did say it was now in the SRO.
Lots of interesting items about the glassworks in the Pennant link
Paul S.:
sorry to hear that m has been sic ;) ........and Mike, what did you decide in the end.....keep your hat or flog it and give half to the charity shop ;)
Do hats come up on ebay, and if so what do they fetch money wise?? not that I'd ever sell mine.
Baked_Beans:
Hi Paul,
My previous hat, I once owned , :'( , I sold on ebay for £30.00 to a buyer in the U.S.A. (as mentioned above).
I'm keeping this one though....perhaps I need to go back to the charity shop and give them £30.00
Paul, how do you think the colour of yours compares to the Nailsea window glass pics. from the Bristol museum ?
Ta, Mike.
Paul S.:
not easy to make a comparison right now, as I'm sitting in a non-daylight type of electric light, but......I'd say the colour of my hat is identical to your pix of the 6th October showing the pane of crown window glass, the strap handled jug and the piece of cullet. As for the colour, I'd agree with Keith Vincent's description of "a pale green metal, the characteristic Nailsea colour" (for articles other than the bottles) - although as with all glass 'colours' this is open to some degree of personal interpretation, and can be variable depending on the thickness of the glass, but I think the match with my hat is o.k. as a pale watery green.
As we've said before, the sand used at Nailsea appears to have been sourced locally (to Bristol), certainly in this factory's earlier period, to minimize transport costs - obviously when you're making utility articles economy is important, and maybe different 'sands' produce slightly differing colours, and this one is PERHAPS characteristic of the particular Nailsea source of sand. But on the other hand maybe most sands give something close to this when you aren't using the cleanest and most pure product with iron impurities.
Vincent's book categorizes the various types of glass from Nailsea, and in his category No. 1 he refers to articles of a 'pale green tinge' as soda-lime glasses, for which, obviously, one constituent was manganese. You'd assume the factory had made various trials and found this was the nearest they could get to a clear glass, and had they introduced a greater quantity of manganese this would have created its own problem by making the glass darker rather than simply de-colourizing the stuff.
As you'd imagine, the recipe for this 'pale green tinge' doesn't include iron oxide - which was however added to the batch when manufacturing bottles (and the manganese was probably omitted) - presumably it was traditional to have dark green or brown for bottles - and probably cheaper to produce. Perhaps no factory had made clear bottles prior to this date??? Why were bottles always dark green or brown??
Vincent suggests that it seems unlikely that flint glass (i.e. clear) was produced at Nailsea - all items examined appear to have the pale green tinge present to some degree - even thinly blown pieces.
So........my hat might have been made at Nailsea, possibly :)
Baked_Beans:
Cheers Paul,
You must be very pleased with your charming hat . If you ever find yourself in Bristol then you must pay a visit to the museum with hat in hand ! Not only is there the Nailsea display but there is a large collection of early French paperweights, Bristol blue, green,purple etc. and a very big cabinet full of early drinking glasses.
Owning a possible piece of Nailsea brings a real added interest to reading around and researching the whole subject area .
I have a good basic book entitled 'English Bottles and Decanters 1650-1900' written by Derek Davis , a Letts Collectors Guide ,1972, SBN 850970490.
He talks about the addition of added minerals for colour and pulverised cobalt was imported from Saxony into Bristol . Copper and cobalt was used for Bristol blue, ...copper, iron, chromium for green...nickel and manganese for violet ....calcium,tin,arsenic,fluorspar(what's that?) and phosphate for 'white opal'. ......just thought I'd throw that in ;)
On page 28 there's a straight sided bottle dated 1777, in the description he states that dark bottles made of impure metal could be made cheaply and the darkness of the bottle was thought to protect the wine from daylight. The book doesn't touch on clear/light green Codd mineral bottles though.
ta, Mike.
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