Topic: ID help - signature?

[tropdevin]

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Hi.  I have a competently made surface decorated paperweight, with heart shaped vine leaves and trailed decoration. The interior is a white shell deeply encased in clear glass. Diameter 2 3/4 inch / 70 mm.

It is scratch signed (and dated 2001) on the base.  Does anyone recognise the signature?  I have provided base images both ways up!

Alan

[Derek]

Hi Alan

Despite the scrawled signature I think this is Okra - here is my example from 2002 with the usual neat signature on a dished base. Excuse the poorly lit photos. Mine is 74mm diameter and has the same white shell with surface decoration.

Richard Golding bought the Okra business back from Moorcroft in 2000 so it would still have been in a state of  upheaval in 2001 as the studio was set up in a hurry in the old Ruskin centre. This may account for the scrawled signature? Yours doesn't appear to be  iridised but it could well be that they had not got the fuming chamber set up when yours was made.

Best regards

Derek

[scimiman]

Definitely not Okra in a hundred years. Mike www.abfabglass.co.uk

[KevinH]

If not Okra, then maybe it is Glasform?

[Alton11]

looks like S Foster to me. Perhaps Stephen Foster?

[KevinH]

If it is Stephen's work then 2001 means it was made while he was the glassworker at Broadfield House Glass Museum. Stephen can be contacted via his website http://www.stephenfosterglass.com/

[chopin-liszt]

Well spotted Alton11...

I would not have made that out in a lifetime, but I do have a piece I bought directly from Stephen, at Broadfield House in 2001, when he was working with Ian MacDonald there, on a studentship.

He asked me if I'd like him to sign it, which I obviously did.

He did struggle a bit with the engraver, had a lot of trouble making his mark, but I have just brought it out and compared it with the image above.
It's not a bad match at all.

I think you've cracked it!

[tropdevin]

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Hi.

Thanks everyone for your help - I think Stephen Foster is the answer.

Alan