Topic: Large Sowerby 1054 3 tier cakestand

[mhgcgolfclub]

I have some pictures you may be interested in, whilst at a fair last week I saw this extremely large 3 tier cake stand . The largest plate would have been about 13" or 14" with the top plate about 9".
It had a very nice tubular frame .

It had date lozenge which I could not read and I was not sure who made it , the large plate was badly cracked and priced at £60.00 decided not to even ask .

I have since found out it was Sowerby 1054 pattern. The pictures are only on my phone at present and I will try to upload later.

Roy

[Anne]

Roy, that sounds fascinating. I've not seen a 3-tier one by Sowerby before, so very much look forward to seeing your photos.

[mhgcgolfclub]

Picture for Fred

Thanks Anne

Pictures are not great and do not really show the difference in the size of the plates.

Hopefully I have not resized to small.

Roy

[Paul S.]

Looking at the factory pattern Nos. shown in Cottle, it would not be unreasonable to suggest that 1054 would dated to somewhere around the 1872 - 1874 period, although unfortunately this is one of the many Nos. that - for whatever reason - he omits.

I've looked at volume 3 of Glen & Stephen Thistlwood's CD covering the Sowerby catalogues, and pattern 1054 is shown on page 11 of Pattern Book XI which I believe dates to 1885.         Pattern 1054 is included under 'Buttler Middles and for Plates', and appears to be the lower half of a butter dish.             Comparing this No. in the catalogue with Roy's stand, I'd suggest that 1054 refers to the ornamentation/design and not to a particular shape, which is a not uncommon event.
           
I'm sure that whilst occuring in Pattern Book XI, the date of this Registration is almost certainly earlier, and may well have been a sales line that remained in production for some period after.               I'm unsure if it's possible - using the CD catalogues - to date the first appearance of any factory pattern No. - but I'm sure there are clever people out there who will know the answer to that.
Simon Cottle's book does link a proportion of pattern Nos. to Registration Nos., thus providing a 'start' date for some items, but as said, he doesn't unfortunately include 1054.                     

Have to admit to not looking through the entire rest of the CD catalogues to verify whether 1054 occured elsewhere, or whether the plate stand is shown  -  I'll have another look later today, hopefully.

Do you have the CD catalogues Roy?

[Paul S.]

the attached image from Kew showing Registration 274743 dated 31.07.1873 (parcel 5), appears to be the same pattern showing on both Roy's plate stand and the picture of the butter middle from the Thistlewood's CD catalogue, thus making the connection between pattern 1054 and Rd. 274743.              This appears to confirm that Rd. 274743 refered to ornamentation/design only - also that this date seems to have been the first outing for pattern 1054.         
I wonder on how many other items this pattern might be found.
Unfortunately, this doesn't help with dating the manufacture of Roy's item, other than to say it was made subsequent to the end of July 1873, and if the lozenge was as difficult to read as Roy says, then it may well have been some considerable time afterwards

I'd appreciate it if someone will confirm that my eyesight isn't going, and that the above does make sense - thanks. 

[agincourt17]

Thank you for showing this, Roy – unusual, quite spectacular, and it shows off the pattern beautifully.

I can confirm that, from the lozenges I have seen on other pieces in the pattern, that Sowerby pattern 1054 is from RD 274743, registered on 31 July 1873 – P5.

It appears in the Sowerby pattern book XI (1885) as lots of different shapes (and many of the illustrations have a diamond registry mark against them to indicate a registered design):

Page 11 – butter dish;
Page 19 – comport in 4 sizes (5 ½, 8, 9 and 10 inch);
Page 25 – shallow round and oval dishes (6 inch), and deeper dishes (round 5 sizes, and oval 4 sizes);
Page 29 – 12 inch plate on a large sugar;
Page 30 – 11 inch bowl on a celery;
Page 33 – inkwell with top;
Page 41 – round moulded salt;
Page 42 – round and oval salt;
Page 47 – sugar (in pattern book as L. 1054);
Page 67 – tumbler;

….but definitely not a cake stand with any number of tiers (let alone 3!), and the largest plate in the pattern book seems to be 12 inches diameter.

Presumably the metalware was silver plated. I wonder if it was marked?

The centre of the 1054 plates and dishes is plain, but I wonder if the central hole in each the glass cake stand tiers would have been made at the moulding stage or drilled some time afterwards.

Nice to see the design representation in confirmation, Paul.

Fred.

[mhgcgolfclub]

Thanks Paul and Fred

Paul I do not have the CD catalogues.

Paul at the time of looking at the cake stand I had other bags of glass . I could see that at least the 2 largest plates had date lozenges and because of the plates above could not get a good straight down view, they may have been quite clear. The small top plate did not marked.
Also I had to be a little carefull as I did not want the large bottom plate to fall off or damage it any more while handling the stand.

I did not look for any marks on the metal it may well have been plated.

Fred I did not measure the diameter of the bottom plate I thought it was larger than 12" but it may well have been .
Just picking up the cake stand by the handle it had a lot of weight maybe 2 or 3 kg.

I am regretting maybe that I did not buy it or at least make an offer as it may have been not impossible to find a replacement bottom plate to fully restore it. I will keep an eye out for it again in a couple of weeks but I think I may have missed by chance with this one.

But at least I took 3 pictures for future reference.

Roy

[Anne]

Roy, thank you for the pics, What an interesting piece. It almost looks too tall, if you know what I mean...  I wonder if this was glass by Sowerby, metalware by AN Other, assembled by A Third Party, as it doesn't seem to be a commonly seen item?

[Paul S.]

with your passion for C19 pressed glass Roy, am surprised you don't have Glen and Stephen's CDs  -  well worth getting (assuming they're still available)

Never having pursued factory pattern books, I know nothing of the reason as to why, for example, Simon Cottle was unable to show the corresponding Sowerby Nos. for many of the Board of Trade Registrations  -  although the obvious assumption must be that he was unable to find the necessary deails.            Presumably an attempt at 'matching up' those items that presently can't be cross referenced, is part of the task that Fred is currently attempting.
Having looked at a great deal of paperwork at The National Archives, I can say that pages in the Representation books don't include any factory pattern details, unfortunately.
When preparing their work for publication, do we know if Simon Cottle and Glen and Stephen Thistlewood acquired their information from Broadfield House - or might the factory catalogues have been sourced elsewhere?

[Paul S.]

something from earlier this morning, which is probably one of the round dishes from page 25 in the Thistlewood CD catalogue - volume three.
Diameter is about 9.75" (250mm) - and the lozenge is reasonably easy to read, but possibly not one of the earliest pressings - no trade mark that I can see.         It has a foot rim with stylized sort of rayed centre.