Welcome to the GMB, DG.
Coming to post my reply, I see that most of my points have already been made by others, but for what they are worth, here they are anyway.
Your plates were made by Sowerby & Co., Ellison Glass Works, Gateshead-on Tyne.
The peacock head trade mark on the underside is Sowerby’s trademark, introduced in 1876.
The pale blue plates are press moulded in a type of opaque glass that Sowerby called vitro-porcelain (which was manufactured like glass but had a compostion and appearance of porcelain) and which first appeared in 1877.
The basket weave plates are Sowerby pattern number 1102 (and they are sometime found with a matching stand, which has the same pattern number). They are from an unregistered design (and so do not have a diamond registry date mark), but they seem to have been made in various colours of vitro-porcelain from the late 1870s for quite a long time (probably though well into the late 1880s or even beyond).
The plates are also seen in marbled ‘slag glass’ of various colours (which Sowerby called ‘malachite’ glass) which probably date from the more or less the same sort of date, a ruby red glass (probably from the 1880s-1890s), and even iridised carnival glass from the 1920s-1930s.
The vitro-porcelain pattern 1102 plates are not particularly uncommon (and certainly not ‘rare’ in white, black or blue (though the examples in yellowish green vitro-porcelain are much less common). The malachite glass examples are not uncommon either, but the transparent ruby examples (particularly with their matching stands) are quite scarce.
Fred.
Topic: Rare Blue Glass Plate I.D HELP+++++++ ID = Sowerby (Read 1278 times)
