Keith, I can tell you that the two vases in the photo are of a pattern called Nimbus, they were a basic studio design made by a mould blowing method as opposed to the all hand made techniques of old Okra. The reason for the use of the mould blowing method is as follows: This was the Enterprise Trading Estate period of Okra Glass, there were 10 glass blowers employed in the hot shop; coming from crystal glass companies in the local area, Only 3 of them were of the standard of making the old hand made style, so a mould boy machine was made for them to create the blown pieces, these pieces came out of the annealing over with jagged tops that had to be worked by yours truly as I completed all of the cold working processes: cutting, polishing, sand blasting, fitting stoppers etc. The tops had to be cut down, linished and polished. Another reason for these basic studio ranges was that Richard’s business partner wanted to push for mass production and these mould blown pieces could be made rather quickly: personally, I much prefer the all hand made pieces. Moorcroft bought the studio in 1999, they got their designers trying to produce patterns: great at pottery, bad at glass, barely a year went by before they gave up and sold the studio back to Richard. The other vase looks like it could be from the Okra studio as Richard did give employees pieces on occasion, not to sell but to keep.
Topic: Any one know who made my vase please? (Read 1877 times)
