Topic: E.Varnish mercury glass with embossed seal, circa 1849

[Lustrousstone]

It's not that hot: 71 deg C much lower than the boiling point of water

[flying free]

ah, ok, thank you Christine.  So they will have had ovens of some sort presumably?

Just going back to the records on Powell and Sons, some of the glass that has a Hale Thomson plug appears to be uranium glass (one piece definitely is).
Barry Skelcher says this :

'But who first thought of using uranium to colour glass? Some authors give the honour to Josef Riedel
at his glassworks in Bohemia in the 1830s. It may be that he was the first to produce uranium
coloured glass in quantity with his Annagrun and Annagelb - green and yellow glasses named after
his wife - but it is unlikely that he was the first to add Klaproth‟s discovery to sand and alkali. We know
from records held by the Museum of London that Whitefriars used uranium colouring in 1836. '

Source:  Glass Association.org.uk 
http://www.glassassociation.org.uk/sites/default/files/Uranium_Glass_sample_article.pdf

So it appears the Museum of London do have earlier records on Powell and Sons (Whitefriars).  And it appear they did use uranium colouring.


Also in the same link

' However there is an interesting note in the Pottery Gazette and Glass
Trade Review (September 1891) which states that “fifty years ago it (uranium) was first used in glass
and we think then it was new, or at all events a scarce mineral, and our older readers will remember
the rage „canary yellow‟ had at that period in hock glasses, toilet bottles, etc. Amongst the early
makers of this colour in glass were Hawkes and Bacchus & Green, who priced it at 3s. 6d. per lb. It
was then only made in transparent glass; now we find it in semi-opaque and ivory body, but like
everything in fancy glass it has had its day and is seen no more”.'

So that would go back to 1841.



And on the glassmuseum website it says Choisy-le-Roix were making it in 1838 and in 1843 Baccarat;

http://www.theglassmuseum.com/uranium.htm

So basically, the uranium glass is not helpful in working out where unfortunately
m

[flying free]

According to this article published in 1867 (it seems to have been repeated from an earlier article in 1860 in the same journal ), it implies on page 192, Ures Dictionary of Arts...

that Foucault's new process of silvering glass had not at that point made it's way into production so they declined to comment on it, and it implies Hale Thomson's silvering process was still current at that time.

Click here to view


I need to caveat this by saying I think I've read somewhere that a German chemist was working on this after Hale Thomson patented the process.

And also that in American I have read that they started making silvered glass in the mid 1850s (iirc)


m

[flying free]

The Art Journal Illustrated catalogue of the Exhibition page 26


Shows three items of Hale Thomson process silvered glass:

- The middle vase appears to have an applied silver rim the same as the vase in the V&A.

- The bottom vase looks like it is also 'adapted' from a previous item somehow.

- The top one is the only item that looks as though it was blown double-walled.

Art Journal Illustrated catalogue  link (date of Illustrated Catalogue not known to me):
Click here to view



Note:
It seems to me that the PR information put out at the time was that Hale Thomson was silvering English glass: 
The descriptions are so in depth and compare the fact that Thomson is using double-walled glass ('... We understand  the glass comes from Powell and co'.. etc - for source see final Art Journal  link page 76 on this post),  and 'Mr Drayton was given to using Bohemian and German vessels, but Mr Thomson's vases... etc'.
Yet here we are with one vase previously in the Wallace Collection seemingly Bohemian, another in the V&A which looks remarkably Bohemian and one on this page linked, that also has a silver rim applied so appears not to have been double blown and appears in the Art Journal Official Illustrated book of the Exhibition.



Thomson may not have known any different - he was just silvering them apparently, (but his patent which talks about fixing two walls together by appropriate means implies he did).
Someone knew that some of them were not English glass.  Maybe.  Hence perhaps the oblique comments 'The colours employed in the manufacture of the glass,  which we understand is from the glasshouse of Messrs. Powell and co'? 

I'm not saying the double-walled items were definitely not made at Powells but there is some kind of smoke and mirrors (pardon the pun) effect going on here.

Barrie Skelcher mentions that the Museum of London had records that Whitefriars were using uranium in 1836, so there are records available of something.


The Frankfort Zeitung apparent article (if it really was printed there? I am beginning to question what was PR for the Great British digestion and whether it actually was printed in the FZ), I found reprinted in a journal, Little's Living Age, purporting to be a re-print from an article in the FZ, and seems to copy much of the text from Chamber Journal article I linked to previously (see page 63 of the Chambers link below).  BUT it  goes one stage further, as apparently it had a headline 'Bohemian Glass outdone' and also mentioned that some of Mr Thomson's silvered articles cost £500!, further, the article says 9/10th of this cost is down to design and making and talks about the richness and purity of British glass. It's over the top in fulsome praise.   And goes on to say that they hope their German makers at the exhibition will investigate this wonderful new silvered design, and that they suspect the large globes might be the most easily copied.  I wonder if that article really appeared in Germany?

Chamber journal link:
Click here to view


See also FZ apparent article:

Page 276
From Little’s living age 2nd November 1850
Click here to view



Art Journal (1st March 1851) link page 76 - giving effusive and glowing description in full detail of Hale Thomson glass items:
Click here to view



It may just be that some of the items were put into the exhibition that were old stock from Drayton maybe?
It might be that Powell and Sons were making Bohemian style glass at the time?
But something is not as it seems imho.

m

[flying free]

Topic:  Where were the items blown?

Here is another description from the Illustrated Exhibitor page 535 source digi.ub.uni-Heidelberg

Click here to view


Among other descriptions of Hale Thomson silvered items, it talks about a pair of 30" high amber coloured glasses silvered by Hall (sic)  Thomson's patent process,  cut in deep intaglia with wild horses and a panther about to attach on one side and a grizly bear attacking a horse on the other. 

Do not sound remotely like English glass to me.

So, that possibly seems to solve that one.  Some of the items he silvered appear to have been Bohemian despite the Art Journal reports suggesting otherwise.

Which just leaves the double-walled items 

m

[KevinH]

... wild horses ... panther ... grizly bear ...

Sounds North American to me (even if the "illustrated exhibitor" was printed in London.)

Perhaps the vases were Bohemian but engraved for the American market? And perhaps they were another example of the 'not-double-walled-blown' type of silvering?

Hmm. If I had ordered (or purchased) a perfectly good pair of Bohemian-made vases of thirty inches height, deep intaglia cut and with engraved wildlife scenes ... would I have risked their being silvered?

[KevinH]

A week ago I estimated that I would, by now, have produced a timeline from the Court cases. I got distracted by a number of things. So no timeline yet. And no revised estimate.

I will however, go through the existing posts in this thread and tidy up line breaks in copied text.

I will also change long links to clickable text - they produce scroll bars for pc / laptop viewing but for mobile devices they can cause problems with the display.

[flying free]

it's possible it might have been a wild board. 
Sometimes the rewriting of these things gets misconstrued somewhere along the way

August Bohm was a wonderful glass engraver and I think some of their engraved topics came from Rubens paintings etc. ( I think, and iirc from stuff I've read - no quotes please).

I don't know if these pieces were engraved by Bohm.  Just saying.  It might not have been a grizzly bear.

Talking of misquoting etc - coming back to Hale Thomson saying they used someone called 'sago'  - any ideas on that anyone?


Thank you for converting the links Kev.  I'm sorry, I know it's a problem when I link them, but I don't know how to convert them myself as I link them.


I haven't done a timeline yet.  But it might be easier now we know when he died and when the partnerships were dissolved.

I'm no closer on the double-walled glass.  There is one curiosity, apart from them being double-walled, that keeps me looking



m

[KevinH]

See also Diane's recent post, now moved into this forum.

Antique English Silvered Mercury Glass

[flying free]

Topic:  Grizly or grisly - reply #214 and #215

Kev, this has been nagging me 
with reference the Ill. Exhibitor description of the bear - I've double checked the quote v what I quoted and I made a mistake in my quote:

I incorrectly spelled the word grizly and therefore misquoted what I read and so it has an entirely different meaning.

It was spelled 'grisly'

Quote from Oxford Living Dictionary

'Usage
The words grisly and grizzly are quite different in meaning, though often confused.

Grisly means ‘causing horror or disgust’, as in grisly crimes, whereas grizzly is chiefly used with reference to a kind of large American bear, and can also mean ‘grey or grey-haired’


Origin
Old English grislic ‘terrifying’, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch griezelig. '


So, not a grizzly bear, but just a bear attacking a horse, a grisly scene.  There were /are bears in Bohemia but I think it's more likely to have come from a painting maybe?
https://www.britannica.com/place/Czech-Republic