Topic: Info on James Powell Topaz glass - "The Queen Victoria Topaz bowl"

[cagney]

  I came upon this in my research on glass recipes. Availiable online from the Rakow library at CMOG [Creative Commons]. Sources for where to buy ingredients in England are given and two that sell uranium. Maybe an outside chance you may come across an archive and be able to cross reference with a glassworks. In any event an excellent and easy read for anyone interested in mid 19th century glassmaking.

[flying free]

Thank you so much for sharing Cagney.

1) I think the whole thing is here:
https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Treatise_on_the_Art_of_Glass_Making_To_w/fhldAAAAcAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=oriental+green+uranium+glass&pg=PA73&printsec=frontcover

Published by W Gillinder in 1851 in Birmingham.

The Introductory pages are interesting.  Much bemoaning of the Excise duties and how that affected glassmaking and then saying 'in the last five years' things had progressed since it was dropped.  i.e. he was saying this in 1851.
Also talks about a 'state of ignorance and degradation' amongst glassmakers during that period before his treatise was written and uses that to explain a lack of progress in glassmaking as well. 
I read it that he goes on to say he hopes that with his treatise written it might encourage progress.

So from his writings it doesn't sound like the British glass industry was in fantastic competitive shape in the decades prior to 1851, or of a skill  to be able to compete with Bohemian colour and design imports etc. 

Interesting.  Published 1851 the year of the Great Exhibition.

Victoria's bowls supposedly made 14 years earlier.

I suppose it's important to take into account it may not have been written from altruistic desires but perhaps also PR - just in case.



2) Topaz is mentioned in the book  a few times.  Here are two recipes named 'Victoria Yellow or Topaz'

https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Treatise_on_the_Art_of_Glass_Making_To_w/fhldAAAAcAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=oriental+green+uranium+glass&pg=PA73&printsec=frontcover



3) I can't remember the dates of manufacturing of uranium glass in the USA, thinking about Ford's letters.  Does the date coincide with this treatise being published 1851 including recipes? or was it earlier (I'll do a trawl back through later).

[cagney]

  The earliest documented evidence in the U.S.A. I can find is the small furnace at Sandwich built in 1844 specifically for the manufacture of colored glass. called the "canary furnace" in company records. I believe Leighton of New England Glass Co. most likely a few years earlier than 1844. Gillinders treatise of 1851 and 1856 at Rakow also complete and similarly an easy read as Googles.

[Ekimp]

I don’t know if this might be relevant to this topic but on the Love Decanters website he has what he says is an Irish late 18c to early 19c boat shaped pedestal salt. It’s the wrong colour but looks like uranium glass, that would be very early use of uranium glass wouldn’t it.

Going by Irish Glass by Phelps Warren, first edition, that type of salt was late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries, evolving to ball shaped salts by c1820. I don’t know if the pedestal salts were reproduced but it might be of interest to various time lines mentioned earlier in the topic.

Uranium salt on Love Decanters: http://www.lovedecanters.co.uk/LDIrishMisc.html

On his youtube video, you can see it glowing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9MDz8K6yQg

[flying free]

Klaproth first isolated uranium in 1789 as far as I read:
https://www.glassmessages.com/index.php/topic,72609.msg403913.html#msg403913

If that salt is late 18th century then that's very interesting.
Is there something about the shape that dictates that it's late 18th? 
Is there any research showing Uranium glass was being produced in Ireland in late 18th? Before uranium glass in Bohemia was being produced.
Could it date  later into the early 19th? 

[Ekimp]

I’ve only got the Phelps reference for late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries. As far as I’m aware, it’s the shape of the bowl with the pedestal with a “lemon squeezer” foot, but don’t know much about them. Here are a couple in the cmog. The first one is also shown in Phelps plate 78c.

https://glasscollection.cmog.org/objects/24257/salt?ctx=d216716423c84311adb216476e53e82dd94f18fe&idx=157

https://glasscollection.cmog.org/objects/8410/salt?ctx=67c69eee36f190eee977b93e5765a0cc5a4a8efb&idx=206

[flying free]

just putting this here because the design of this bowl, the sturdiness and shape of it, reminds me of some Russian glass items.  The cutting reminds me of the cutting on lots of things but combined with the cutting on the base underneath, it reminds me mostly of the red glass flask, right hand in this picture (see Seite 7 von 41 Seiten):
https://pressglas-korrespondenz.de/aktuelles/pdf/pk-2019w-chukanova-maltsov-pokal-1903.pdf

This is about Maltsov glass but it's seems to me, from the uranium glass becher also featured in that picture, that the colour of the uranium glass is different.  Anyway, leaving it here for comparison info.
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O2170/finger-bowl-davenport-co/finger-bowl-davenport--co/

That said, there were two visits I could find:
-  Dinner in St George's Hall, Windsor Castle, for Tsar Alexander II of Russia. 14th May 1874
- The other from Tsar Nicholas II later in 1890s.  I think a visit to Balmoral and a family visit rather than State.
Neither were held at Guildhall.

Also, I don't think this would explain the curious U rather than V on the engraving as if it were family wouldn't it be even more likely they would  ensure the V was a V as per the Monogram.

[flying free]

Talking of the U shaped V on the engraved monogram on the V&A clear glass plate and uranium glass bowl, this piece linked below is from what I understand earlier than 1839 (from Saint-Louis) and the engraving doesn't look the most sophisticated however the V definitely looks like a V:

https://laterreestunjardin.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Cristal-Saint-Louis-4.jpg

Source - https://laterreestunjardin.com/cristallerie-saint-louis/

That UR of the monogram is inexplicable.

[flying free]

ref the monogram UR v VR
This is a silver snuffer tray in The Royal Collection Trust dated apparently to 1839-40 - the monogram V is definitely engraved as a V
https://www.rct.uk/collection/47725/snuffer-tray

[flying free]

For future reference just in case it becomes linked/important:
A uranium glass butter dish base c. late 1840s Rice, Harris Islington Glass
https://www.glassmessages.com/index.php/topic,73283.0.html