Topic: Cut glass jelly...is it possible to give an approximate date ?

[Baked_Beans]

Any chance of a date for this jelly ? Lots of age scratching to base. Thick glass , one white seed embedded. About 10cm tall. 16 star-cut base. Thanks for having a look.

Cheers, Mike

[Paul S.]

pass.............  I have a couple similar, plus a handled custard - only wish I did feel confident about dating them, but certainly this appearance of multiple mitres running around the bowl, plus the slice cutting seems to have been quite common on jellies and custards in the C19.

Earlier jellies and custards seem easier to date, somehow, but with these I always worry that they are later copies with earlier features.
According to Wilkinson, sixteen point stars are allegedly from c. 1830 and the band of slice cutting around the middle might suggest early C19.                The rim isn't really a saw-tooth rim  -  it's nowhere near robust or deep enough, but again hints at late Georgian/Regency, and possibly Irish in origin.
Despite all this the cutting lacks imagination, or any specific style that would help to date it by comparison with related pieces  -  also, jellies from before 1840/50 tend to be taller.

My suggestion for date would be second half C19 - which is very approximate, and quite possibly wrong  -  perhaps someone else will have a better idea.

[Baked_Beans]

Thanks very much indeed Paul,

I was thinking Regency and possibly Irish (due to the horizontal cuts). There is a bowl, plate 37, in Irish Glass by Mary Boydell , The Irish Heritage Series, 5. dated 1830 with shallow saw cuts to the rim ...very similar in style (but closer together). Plate 36 shows the base of a Hookah tobacco pipe...'made for the Eastern trade during the early nineteenth century' which shows horizontal cuts (don't know the technical term) and diagonal cuts, to the base, but the diagonal ones are again, closer together than the ones just under the rim on this example.

I've been searching on the internet and found these , possibly earlier , which are shorter in height..........

http://www.legacyantiques.co.uk/set-of-four-panel-cut-hollow-stemmed-jelly-glasses-c-1810.html

Thanks again, Mike

[Paul S.]

well, what do I know then              As a type of product, these things can vary enormously in shape and decoration from their beginnings in the latter part of the C17 to as recently as early C20.         Regret I don't have Mary Boydell's book, but my opinion on the horizontal cuts indicating the likelihood of an Irish origin in particular, isn't something that I'm aware of  -  there are other forms of decoration that are more widely and better known from that country, but.............. who knows, and Ms. Boydell was doubtless vastly better informed than me.   (I have Westropp's book, and Warren's  -  does the lady's book cover additional Irish material??)           
For my money - when comparing with Irish glass - this piece lacks the density of cutting for the period you suggest Mike - but the Irish were being clobbered with the Glass Excise Tax from 1825, so perhaps this changed things.

Folk bang on about the Regency as though it lasted an eternity, whereas it was over in a matter of nine years when our dissolute Hanoverian descended monarch became George IV in 1820 and serious collectors tend to loose interest after his demise.

If you take the type of star cut as indicating c. 1830 then you could I suppose hang your hat on that alone and flog it as such and it would be a rash person indeed who contradicted you, unless they were especially clever at dating jellies.              Call it a date you consider your research indicates, and if anyone contradicts you, ask them to explain why.

We're back to the problem of lacking a good book on these things  -  I've looked in Therle Hughes small and rather limited booklet but there's nothing there that comes close to yours, and the Delomosne catalogue for the Tim Udall collection is in a different world altogether - concentrating on the high spots of C18 pieces only.                In the past collectors have concentrated on the C18 and it's images of those that have made it into the books, leaving us a lot less informed about the C19 pieces.
There's no help in Bickerton either.

As for the dating of the set of jellies in your link, my opinion is that it's possible that different people might have different ideas.       Sorry this has not really been of help.           Maybe it's this apparent difficulty of dating that stops others from commenting - mind you who wants to go out with a jelly.

[Baked_Beans]

Thanks Paul,

Mary Boydell's booklet published in 1976 is really the only reference I have on Irish Glass (sadly) , she does mention prismatic cutting but she doesn't imply it's a specific identifying feature  of Irish glass ....it's just quite a few of the photos in the book show it as a feature.

Thanks for having a look in your other volumes too. I'm happy with '19th century jelly' and will assume the second half as you say.

Cheers for your thoughts and advise , Mike 

[Paul S.]

Westropp's 'Irish Glass' was published originally in 1920, and I suspect firsts are rather scarce now, but fortunately for us there was a revised edition with additional text and pix edited by and with an intro by Mary Boydell, in 1978.             Westropp's book probably remains the standard text book on Irish glass from the late C17 to the late C19  -  it's very readable and very interesting  -  and quoting from his own words - on a matter that crops us often when the GMB discuss glass from Ireland  -  he says............

"" There are probably no glass objects so distinctive in shape or cutting that we can at once point to them as having been made in Ireland.     In fact there is very little to go on with regard to form or decoration, as it is certain that English designs were carried out in Ireland by English glass workers"". 

Nonetheless masses of prismatic cutting (often wrongly called step cutting) always come to mind when thinking of Irish water jugs and decanters  -  and the vesica pattern is another that I always think of as more Irish than English, but think this appears more in the form of engraving rather than standard deep cutting. 

His book includes a picture of the base for the hookah pipe your mention, showing the slice cutting and large relief diamonds, but unfortunately I can't see any pix of jellies.

Another cause for being wary when dating some of these cut pieces with the apparent looks of earlier periods, are the comments by Charles Hajdamach regarding late C19 and early C20 proliferation of reproductions of Georgian and Regency designs/cutting - mostly of table ware.
In his 'British Glass 1800 - 1914' he goes into some detail regarding big names in British glasshouses who were obviously attempting to satisfy the then current fashion for older glass, and to which apparently Mrs. Graydon Stannus added her own brand of confusion.
The same problem seems to have occurred in the States due to the passion they have for ABP designs, although perhaps that was more an instance of deliberate deception.

Meant to say that I have a spare copy of Phelps Warren's 1970 edition 'Irish Glass'  -  not so comprehensive as the revised and enlarged 1980 edition, but still gives masses of info.  ...........    my return favour for the celery perhaps.

Send me an off Board email with address and will post in the coming day or two.

I still really do not know what to think regarding a date for your jelly..........  perhaps I'm leaning more nearer to c. 1850  -  shame we don't have more contributors for these things.

[Baked_Beans]

Mary Boydell did talk about the size of the glass industry in Ireland compared to England and Scotland which is interesting, she says....

" it is worthwhile considering that when the Excise was introduced in Ireland in the middle 1820's the country was producing, under the heading of lead glass, about 20,000 pounds (money) a year compared with rather more than that in Scotland and about 170,000 pounds in England. Thus at the best of times the Irish glass industry was quite small when compared with that in England and it is most unlikely that Ireland could ever have produced all the antique table glass which today (1976 ) is attributed to Waterford and other factories in the country "


It seems that the 1850's was a transition point from deep cutting to a preference for engraving....she says...." In the 1850's a growing appreciation of the delicate elegance of engraving rather than deep cutting may have been bought about partly by the appearance in the 1840's of mass-produced pressed glass......and Ruskin's pronouncement in 1851 that ' all cut glass is barbourous: for cutting conceals its ductility ' ...may have had some influence ....nevertheless a demand for cut glass continued throughout the nineteenth century. "

Thanks for the offer of the book , very kind of you . I will continue to look for celery vases ! 

Cheers, Mike