Topic: Pressed glass clear bowl British - ID = Sowerby

[malcmat]

This bowl does have a lozenge mark inside on the base but hard to read its 4 inch dia x 3.5 inch tall
Any ideas please on maker/year
many thanks
malc

[Paul S.]

you might try using Blu Tack to take a pressing, alternatively try talc or carbon paper to highlight the diamond.         In the meantime I'll look through some of TNA images.             Assume this is a pressed item, and have you looked through any of the Board's pressed groups i.e. Sowerby for example?

[malcmat]

Hi Paul, yes have looked through various pressed glass pages on the net etc .I will try and take a pressing or trace of it
Thanks

[Paul S.]

sure  -  there are two difficulties in the search  -  as we know, none of the factory drawings provide dimensions plus, so far I can't match the bands of horizontal lines showing on this piece, which is possibly a sugar.        Have to say I chickened out of looking through all 125 pages of the Board's pressed gallery for Sowerby patterns.
Small bowls such as this were commonplace shapes, but for reasons possibly lost in the mists of time it appears that they don't start to appear with these opposing projecting handles until Sowerby start their Registrations, and in the 1870s there are several Registrations from that factory for small bowls with such adornment - almost theirs exclusively - as a design feature it's just possible it had its origin in the then current fashion for the aesthetic art - think of the PIQW bowls with similar handles.
Hopefully someone here will recognize this particular design, alternatively you will need to provide at least one of the four pieces of data from the diamond, and taking a punt my opinion is that this will be from the second period of lozenges  -  1868 - 1883.

I've tried Cottle's booklet - Slack and Jenny Thompson, though it's not to say I couldn't have missed seeing this design.     Also tried the Thistlewood's CD rom discs, though don't think these cover all of the 1870s output  -  if I have that wrong do shout.

Hopefully one of the pressed buffs here will have the answer for you - best of luck.

[malcmat]

Hi Paul, thank you for the information unfortunately the blu tac pressing does not show up to well
Malc

[malcmat]

Just went through the 172 pages of the glass gallery site for registered designs but no luck. Had a couple of sowerby handles that were similar.

[Tigerchips]

Looks like a letter 'D' for September on the bottom mark so maybe 1868-1883. Top mark looks like the number 8 so the 8th day if i'm right. Bundle on the left might be 5 or 6.
Just a guess though.

[neilh]

Here's a similar shaped one from Molineaux Webb which can't be later than 1870 so other firms must have been knocking out this type of thing pre 1870. It appears on an odds and ends catalogue page and I've never been sure what it is, guessed at an ice bucket.

[Paul S.]

Hi Neil  -  you know far more about these things than me, but I'd have thought an ice bucket would be of substantial size - and as far as I can tell and looking at the size given for the piece here, that most of these things were of a much smaller size.    The Sowerby examples that I can find images of in the Archive pix look to be much smaller and appear to be made as salts and open sugars.                Don't recall in my trawling of the Kew images of having seen an ice bucket in the lozenge years - though such emphatic comments often come back to haunt me.          Shame that the Webb piece you show wasn't Registered.

It's a fact that C19 U.K. Board of Trade Glass Registrations were (mostly) to protect a shape rather than decoration - and it's the decoration that is giving problems here  ………..   there are a couple of Sowerby pieces Registered in the decade in question that are of a similar shape, but lack matching decoration.          Size comparisons re the factory drawings are unknown - pity they didn't add this information to their drawings.

Will look later at the suggestions for given for some of the lozenge details, and see if anything turns up.

[MHT]

This is the creamer to your small sugar bowl. 3.25inches tall, it also has a registration mark which is difficult to read and no obvious makers mark. I have always thought it was Sowerby due to the shape and colour, it is similar in style to pattern numbers 1568/9 in the 1882 pattern book. I was in an antique shop a couple of weeks ago which had the same jug in blue/white, the registration mark was difficult to read but it also had a faint Sowerby mark.