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

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'On re-reading to me it appears to read that the supply of articles for her Majesty's table were procured separately. It doesn't state they were supplied by Davenports.

It is very specific about two enamelled glass dessert plates (We think Thomas Hawkes perhaps - from discussion with KevH on another thread?) that were used by 'Her Majesty' and the 'Duchess of Kent'. It says they were owned by Messrs. Hetherington & Co of Regents Quadrant (I looked them up and they appear to be lamp dealers?).
It also states very clearly that they were 'a new introduction which attracted great notice' and says they were 'expressly manufactured for the occasion'. (see left hand column bottom half of section in photo attached).
This could imply that other items for Her Majesty's table were items already held at Guildhall.'






I think this could be one of the two enamelled glass dessert plates mentioned in the Mirror article being used by Queen Victoria and the Duchess of Kent (QV's mother):
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O4967/plate-thomas-hawkes/?carousel-image=2006BE7845



And this is apparently William IV coat of arms - note the flowers at the bottom!  So when the Mirror report says the various glass on the top table had a vine border with shamrock, rose and thistles and the Royal Arms  it didn't specify WHICH coat of arms and the border would be commensurate with William IV.  Which would tie in with the Guildhall already holding glass and china  for the top table in their own supplies:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_IV#/media/File:Coat_of_Arms_of_the_United_Kingdom_(1816-1837).svg




This is apparently one of the 24 dessert plates enamelled and used - does say made by Davenport but no reverse picture to check:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/iF1pr2HiRbWZtZwmoU1Row

There is a Guildhall arms at the bottom and a crown at the top. VR insignia in middle.  Would it have been possible for Guildhall to have owned these and just had her insignia painted into the middle?  Gah, might that  blow my theory?  I'd forgotten I'd found that plate.

Better picture of it here - just a crown at the top - very detailed coat of arms of the Guildhall at the bottom though.
https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/plate-with-the-monogram-of-queen-victoria-reigned-1837-1901-davenport-co/hQEg68TUCU2QiA?hl=en&ms=%7B%22x%22%3A0.5003632934608082%2C%22y%22%3A0.3314649344875956%2C%22z%22%3A10%2C%22size%22%3A%7B%22width%22%3A1.4183006535947713%2C%22height%22%3A0.6809701492537313%7D%7D]

Bonhams sold one - they appear to say that Davenports supplied 24 dessert plates (these) and the rest of the china for the masses. The sale does mention it has a printed mark.   They don't mention the glass:
https://www.bonhams.com/auction/22840/lot/124/a-davenport-royal-banqueting-plate-circa-1837/


This is a representation of a Guildhall banquet in 1830 - why would they need a new supply of thousands of pieces of china for QV in 1837?
https://www.londonmuseum.org.uk/collections/v/object-94139/representation-of-the-interior-of-the-guildhall/

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Just adding what I put on the Topaz thread here for completion.  In answer to your question about Paris Whittman I think the company was Poulenc Wittman and this is the history (see below):


 I think Poulenc Wittman is this - this company seems to have started in 1852.  However it seems the distribution of fine chemicals bit came about from 1878?:
https://stichtinghistorischemicroscopie.nl/en/category/poulenc-freres-en/
'Léon Wittman and his brother in law, Etienne Poulenc (1823-1878),  began by retailing photographic products under the “P.W.” name around 1852 and then manufacturing them round the end of the decade. After Etienne’s death in 1878, his widow ran the company with her sons for a couple of years, and then the 2 brothers, Gaston and Emile took over under the name Poulenc Frères. They focused on the production and distribution of fine chemicals, photographic products and colours for glass and ceramics. Meanwhile, the youngest brother, Camille, qualified as a pharmacist and then fires and up to silence in 1893. After he joined the company, they added a research laboratory and a scientific library.

In 1900, the firm became a public limited company. In 1903, they opened a new establishment in Paris dedicated to photographic products and including a projection room in the basement. They continued making pharmaceuticals and other chemicals including, also in 1903, the synthetic anaesthetic stovaine which was used on the large-scale until 1940. In 1928, Rhône-Poulenc, a conglomerate of small chemical and pharmaceutical companies, was formed.'
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  This ia the first description of the refinement/reduction of uranium ore I have seen. I find it most interesting that they reduce it and make sure there is no lead left in it then add a certain amount of lead/flint and cook it to get the powdered form to add to the glass batch. Gillinder in his treatise gives some descriptions of refining/reducing particular ingredients, but not uranium. I think by the 1850s it could be had already refined to a large degree. The sourcing most important as to quality of the refined ore [Whitman/Paris better than the English].

 ...

Cagney I think looking at the photograph you posted on the Topaz thread of the recipe it's Poulenc Wittman and see information I've posted in the one above this.

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  This ia the first description of the refinement/reduction of uranium ore I have seen. I find it most interesting that they reduce it and make sure there is no lead left in it then add a certain amount of lead/flint and cook it to get the powdered form to add to the glass batch. Gillinder in his treatise gives some descriptions of refining/reducing particular ingredients, but not uranium. I think by the 1850s it could be had already refined to a large degree. The sourcing most important as to quality of the refined ore [Whitman/Paris better than the English].

 ...

  There does not seemed to be a whole lot of information on finger bowl/glasses of Bohemian/German origin from this period. The QV bowl stands out in one other aspect and that would be the foot. The norm seems to be fingerbowls without. Although, the Pellat catalog does show basically the same shape #39. Other attributes of the QV bowl show up in various other objects in the catalog such as  the step cutting#62 #63 #68 rich cut and the foot cutting #30.

  The earliest documentation you have for lead glass using uranium in England is 1839 at Holyrood albeit probably one pot batches, 1841 for a large batch. You are tantalizingly close "m".

 

The Apsley Pellatt printed catalogue list of items I think was assumed 1840s.  Obviously doesn't mean that Pellatt wasn't making (or stocking from other manufactuers??)  the shapes before 1840s but...
https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Apsley_Pellatt_late_Pellatt_Green_Glass/lYA-AAAAcAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=apsley+pellatt+finger+bowl&pg=PA8&printsec=frontcover

I looked up the printer M & W Collis, 104 Bishopsgate street within.  I could find them for  1841 and here in 1843
https://londonwiki.co.uk/London1843/London1843C12.shtml
but they weren't in this Tallis list of 1838-1840:
https://www.cgpublishing.com/Godwin/TALLIS.html



Interestingly, Barrie Skelcher I think assessed the bowls and I think said they could have come from Whitefriars.
I wonder whether Pellatt's recipes might have been similar to Whitefriars?

However, that does not account for the odd engraving of the UR on the bowls.  i.e. not VR  but UR. 




And then there is this - The Athenaeum 1847 - advertisement on page 1287 for Apsley Pellatt :

Stock at Apsley Pellatt is 'most extensive containing every novelty of British and Foreign Workmanship ' at both their establishments  Holland Street Blackfriars, and Baker Street Portman Square.

https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Athenaeum/BghfnRHxRlIC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=apsley+pellatt+medicien+shape&pg=PA1287&printsec=frontcover

I also read a report from a tour of Apsley Pellatt in one of the journals (Arts Journal or Mechanic's journal or something similar, report contemporary to mid 1800s obviously) where the reporter said the worker mentioned to them that if someone asked for something in coloured glass they had to say they 'could' make it but not right now, because they had to wait until they had a big enough order of a particular colour before they could do a pot of glass in that colour.  Reporter said a blue glass pot was often in situ but other colours not, the rest were flint glass.

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In 1841 Apsley Pellatt deposited a number of glass items ('Series of Articles') to the Royal Polytechnic Institution including one in Medicean shape. - a 'Medicean vase, arabesque border'

https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Royal_Polytechnic_Institution_Catalo/rihbAAAAcAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=falcon+glass+works+medicean+shape&pg=PA93&printsec=frontcover

See page 93

Finishes on some of the articles included:
'roughed and engraved'
'amber'
'topaz'
'stained and engraved'

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In 1835 Apsley Pellatt gave evidence at the Excise Report (Thirteenth report - Glass)

See page 126 - brief mention of them making coloured glass and the factory's inability to experiment or even make for example copper red glass due to the regulations of excise preventing any chance of success:

https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Parliamentary_Papers/GU0SAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=apsley+pellatt+foreign+glass&pg=PA125&printsec=frontcover

Interesting given the tax wasn't repealed until 1845, so if they were having difficulty making coloured glass in 1835 due to the requirements of when to open and close the pots and the tax excise as well, and these bowls were apparently made in 1837 ...

In addition to this, at the very beginning of his evidence (see page 120) I read it that he says he has given up manufacturing glass but continues to 'trade' glass? He says a little later in the evidence that if the tax was repealed he would recommence making glass immediately. 

The tax wasn't repealed until 1845.  The bowls apparently were made for the 1837 banquet at Guildhall, so ?  IF the bowls had come from Pellatts (just a possibility given the similiarity to the Medicien shape of the finger bowl in the Collis printed pamphlet)  in 1837, did he start making glass again in 1837 or was he trading imports?
If that pamphlet printed by M & Wm Collis was produced in 1841-1843 what were those articles for sale?  Were they imports from France? or Bohemia? that he was selling.

In 1841 he did deposit a 'series of articles' into the Royal Polytechnic Institution.  Were they articles he'd made? or were they 'examples' of a variety of glass finishes to show the designs and colours and decors as examples?




By the way, there are pages of evidence from him on the amounts of tax they were paying and the impact on their ability to produce.  Makes fascinating reading as to how tied these makers hands were and how much these taxes cost them.  Not just in money, which was huge, but also in form filling, extra hands necessary to be employed, the 'overseeing' of the excise inspectors on their premises etc etc. The impact was enormous.
  Not surprising Bohemian glass was so advanced in colour at that time and by comparison.
The damage these taxes did to the trade in this country seem phenomenal.  For one example it seems to me, from what I've read here and in other reports, the advancement of lens making for opticals, telescopes etc was lost to Germany and France. Opticals a very important industry for glass developement at that time.
Seemingly every other competitive country had better opportunities to produce in all the various sectors of glassmaking v the UK.

[flying free]

In 1835 Apsley Pellatt gave evidence at the Excise Report (Thirteenth report - Glass)

See page 126 - brief mention of them making coloured glass and the factory's inability to experiment or even make for example copper red glass due to the regulations of excise preventing any chance of success:

https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Parliamentary_Papers/GU0SAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=apsley+pellatt+foreign+glass&pg=PA125&printsec=frontcover

Interesting given the tax wasn't repealed until 1845, so if they were having difficulty making coloured glass in 1835 due to the requirements of when to open and close the pots and the tax excise as well, and these bowls were apparently made in 1837 ...

The issue of being able to experiment with copper ruby glass mentioned by Pellatt in 1835 is interesting, given I have just come across this information in The Scientific American (Jan-Jun 1881) written by H.J. Powell BA.

 It's a long article but the information/quote on copper ruby production is found in the middle column of that page:

https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Scientific_American/EhI8AQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=uranium+in+glass+H+J+powell&pg=PA4699&printsec=frontcover

 H.J. Powell says in the article
quote
'Bohemian glass, in addition to the silicates of sodium, potassium and calcium, contains traces of the silicates of magnesium, and aluminium.  It is fusible  easily manipulated, and develops, with the sub-oxide of copper, a ruby colour, which cannot be attained with a glass containing silicate of lead.'

I presume Pellatt was using lead glass.  Does the fact he's mentioned experimenting to try and make copper ruby glass indicate that in 1835 they didn't realise you couldn't make copper ruby with glass containing silicate of lead but by 1881 they had deduced that? 


I'm asking the question because I'm not sure if I have correctly understood what H.J. Powell wrote in the Scientific American.

I thought Russian glass used lead glass and so did Harrach.  Both produced red glass.  Does this mean their ruby production was gold ruby?