A pair of small, waisted vases finely engraved with a very attractive scene of a stork or crane amidst palm trees and exotic flowering foliage. Fine applied cranberry glass trailing to upper bodies. Ground and polished pontil bases. Vases measure approx. 4.5" (11.5cm) tall x 2 5/8" (6.5cm) diameter.
(Permission for the re-use of these images on the GMB granted by Jessica Glynn).
Each vase is marked with an engraved registry date lozenge for 11 May 1876 – Parcel 10, corresponding to design registration number 299158, registered by Hodgetts, Richardson & Son, Stourbridge.
The design representation is shown on page 263 of Mervyn Gulliver’s “Victorian Decorative Glass – British Designs 1850-1914” with the description “jug with slightly tapering sides, and an applied shell ribbed handle, and threading around the neck.”
Charles R. Hajdamach shows (in plate 130 on page 160 of “British Glass 1800-1914”) a design for a very similarly decorated Stevens and Williams claret jug from the pattern book of Joseph Keller. The Stevens and Williams claret jug is pattern number 6282 and dates to August 1880. The actual glass is in the collection of the Broadfield House Glass Museum.
So, although the engraved design is almost certainly from the Keller pattern book, the glass vases were made by Hodgetts, Richardson & Son, a major competitor and near neighbour of Stevens and Williams, and H, R & S may well have used their own engraver(s).
Interestingly, William J. Hodgetts (the Hodgetts of Hodgetts, Richardson & Son) patented his invention of a threading machine to speed up the hand process and ensure an absolutely regular spacing on 4 May 1876 (only a week before the registration of the jug design) – see Hajdamach I, p273 and seq., so I would imagine that the threading on the vases is among the earliest actual dateable examples of this process (though the registration date may well have preceded the manufacturing date by a number of years.
Fred.
Topic: Hodgetts, Richardson & Son vases, RD 299158, 1876, Keller pattern engraving. (Read 1315 times)
