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Author Topic: Info on James Powell Topaz glass - "The Queen Victoria Topaz bowl"  (Read 20757 times)

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Offline flying free

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Re: Info on James Powell Topaz glass - "The Queen Victoria Topaz bowl"
« Reply #70 on: January 22, 2021, 04:38:39 PM »
With reference my quote below the foot is similar but not the same actually.  So a red herring.


Oh that's a great article and selection of glasses.  Lovely.

Thinking about the colour of what might be called 'topaz' glass  and that it seems to possibly denote the colour made with uranium c.1837 , here's a photograph of some Bohemian uranium glass from c.1835 to c.1850.  There's an interesting range of colour.  Interesting to also note the foot of the tall piece 3rd from right on the middle shelf.  The foot looks quite similar in design shape to the uranium glass Queen Vic bowl:


https://antiquesandauctionnews.net/articles/Germany%60s-Passau-Glass-Museum:-A-European-Art-Glass-Treasure-/#

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Re: Info on James Powell Topaz glass - "The Queen Victoria Topaz bowl"
« Reply #71 on: January 22, 2021, 05:12:02 PM »
On the questions in reply #59 with reference to the list of items in the Guildhall banquet:
'We do not know whether the 'topaz-glass finger glasses' were uranium glass.'
and
- We do not know whether the 'topaz-glass' glasses were uranium glass.


1) in Farbenglas I , pp 278 under the heading 'Topaz Yellow Glass' Walthraud Neuwirth discusses this colour in some detail and at no point mentions Uranium in the colouring:

Some quotes:
 'Amber, honey or topaz coloured glasses appear to belong to the same basic colour:  a slightly brownish tinted yellow or - to put it more dramatically, gold topaz. ...'
and
'Harrach certainly made the "gold topaz composition" already  before the Vienna Exhibition of 1835, when the table candlesticks in this color were also shown. ...'

The paragraph goes on to discuss various other items of gold topaz in the Exhibition and also presented in Prague in 1831.



2) Reports from the Guildhall event only mention topaz not gold topaz.


3) Apsley Pellatt in his book of 1849 (page 72) mentioned Falcon Glassworks making 'a beautiful topaz tint' glass coloured with uranium and it fractured after a three months and had to be replaced.


4) he also mentions gold topaz containing uranium glass on page 73:
on discussing uranium glass ' the chameleon-like effect of it is 'also produced by uranium alone, used as the colouring oxide for gold topaz:  it has been much in demand for hock glasses and decanters, and many ornamental articles of glass;...' 



It was Apsley Pellatt who introduced the term 'gold topaz' into this conversation with regard to hock glasses in his book of 1849.


The 'finger glasses' and 'hock glasses' in the Guildhall banquet of 1837 were just 'topaz' glass. So they may have been amber or topaz coloured but not uranium?

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Re: Info on James Powell Topaz glass - "The Queen Victoria Topaz bowl"
« Reply #72 on: January 22, 2021, 06:54:38 PM »
hmm, I may have missed the most obvious  :-\

In reply #57 yesterday I commented on the report from The Examiner.
The most relevant information was this part I think:

'No 1554. The Examiner, Sunday 12 November 1837:
page 729.

https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Examiner/zWiNg5Znyt4C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=guildhall+topaz+glass&pg=PA729&printsec=frontcover

'1) ...

2) The article talks about the china and how it was all decorated and then says of the glass:

 'The decanters, claret jugs, champazne, hock and other glasses, were all richly cut, and ornamented with a vine border, varied with the rose, thistle, and shamrock, and the Royal arms. ...
'




Would the Royal Arms not have been this?:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Coats_of_arms_of_Queen_Victoria_of_the_United_Kingdom

or this
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Coats_of_arms_of_Queen_Victoria_of_the_United_Kingdom#/media/File:Royal_arms_of_Victoria,_Queen_of_England.png

So I would have expected to see something like this on it as an example of a 'royal arms':
https://www.leslieantiques.com/items/536250/Antique-Drinking-Glass-Newcastle-Light-Baluster-1750/enlargement1

i.e. not a crown with a VR below it which would be classed as a cypher or monogram?

Unless the report incorrectly called it 'the Royal arms' when it meant the Royal cypher perhaps?


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Offline Ekimp

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Re: Info on James Powell Topaz glass - "The Queen Victoria Topaz bowl"
« Reply #73 on: January 22, 2021, 07:52:26 PM »
The City of London arms are incomplete too. Should be more than just the shield.

Have you tried searching the collection of the Royal Collection Trust? Believe they have items given to the Royals over the years. https://www.rct.uk/
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Re: Info on James Powell Topaz glass - "The Queen Victoria Topaz bowl"
« Reply #74 on: January 22, 2021, 08:01:56 PM »
I had a brief look but more than ever now I think there is a query over the bowl and also the ice plate as to whether either were actually made for the Guildhall banquet.

I've also just discovered a piece written in the The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction in Saturday March 25th 1843 edition.  It goes through all the lists of oxides etc for coloured glass and Uranium is missing (see page 179 on link)

https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Mirror_of_Literature_Amusement_and_I/ur0RAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=queen+adelaide+candlesticks+mortimer&pg=PA224&printsec=frontcover

I am aware that sometime these articles are 're-prints' from information found in other journals sometimes many years earlier.

Apsley Pellatt's book is dated 1849.  Information found in journals I've come across since that date seem to use his lecture/book to impart the detailed information on glass. 

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Re: Info on James Powell Topaz glass - "The Queen Victoria Topaz bowl"
« Reply #75 on: January 22, 2021, 08:10:40 PM »
As a complete aside really I came across a letter from

Mr James Green For Powell and Sons sent to White Friars Glass May 1841  ( Whitefriars )

talks about an order from White Friars Glass to Powell and Sons for syringes:

https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Transactions_of_the_Society_of_Arts/hM4-AQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=transactions+of+the+society+of+the+arts+1817&pg=RA4-PA61&printsec=frontcover

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Re: Info on James Powell Topaz glass - "The Queen Victoria Topaz bowl"
« Reply #76 on: January 23, 2021, 12:08:27 AM »
A much more comprehensive list of items here in The Mirror from 1837 Supplementary Number. No.863.

It prints the reports from various papers and is very detailed from page 323 onwards 'The Banquet':

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101075454072&view=1up&seq=359&q1=glass

Few  interesting things of note:

1) There are mentions of both finger basins (page 323 and listed as a part of the dessert service)
and also finger-glasses  which we've already noted a previous link.
It also mentions 'wine glass rinsers'. 


2) It's clear the mention of the Royal Arms on the items ( page 325 - same report as before)

 
3) An aside The left hand column on page 325 talks about a 'new introduction which attracted great notice' - enamelled glass dessert plates, exquisite workmanship and 'entirely the production of our native artists'. 
I wonder what those were?  It would be good to find them.


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Re: Info on James Powell Topaz glass - "The Queen Victoria Topaz bowl"
« Reply #77 on: February 07, 2021, 11:48:50 PM »
Some  interesting information here from Dr Jarmila Brozova, on the development of uranium glass in Bohemia and the timing. (if you are interested, you are able to highlight and copy the text and paste it into google translate in order to read the information)
Pressglas-Korrespondenz Nr. 02/2000

https://www.pressglas-korrespondenz.de/aktuelles/pdf/brozova-uranglas.pdf


So I still have queries over this bowl:

1) Timing wise with the development of uranium glass in manufacture:
-  could this bowl have been produced in 1837 for the banquet of Queen Victoria at the City of London?

- could this bowl have been produced in Britain in 1837?

- could this bowl have been made at Davenports which is how the V&A have it described?  Has it been described as made by Davenports simply because contemporary reports show that Davenports supplied the glass and china?

2) There is the anomaly of whether a simple VR engraved on the bowl could be described as the 'Royal arms', which is what the papers described all the glassware as having.   


3) Queen Victoria reigned from 1837 to 1901.  Could it have been produced for any number of reasons/occasions during that period? 
Perhaps the golden Jubilee in 1887 but would there not have been some record of this somewhere? 
Or simply as a gift to her from the City of London at some point in her reign?

http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O2170/finger-bowl-davenport-co/

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Re: Info on James Powell Topaz glass - "The Queen Victoria Topaz bowl"
« Reply #78 on: February 08, 2021, 10:32:40 PM »
If the 1 dozen topaz 'finger-glasses' listed does in fact mean finger rinsing bowls, wouldn't they be more likely to be a shape that was just a rounded bottomed bowl with highish sides? 
Something like this:
https://scottishantiques.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=4938

rather than these:
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O2170/finger-bowl-davenport--co/
https://www.cmog.org/artwork/finger-bowl-15?image=0

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Re: Info on James Powell Topaz glass - "The Queen Victoria Topaz bowl"
« Reply #79 on: February 10, 2021, 01:50:12 PM »
A much more comprehensive list of items here in The Mirror from 1837 Supplementary Number. No.863.

It prints the reports from various papers and is very detailed from page 323 onwards 'The Banquet':

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101075454072&view=1up&seq=359&q1=glass

Few  interesting things of note:

1) There are mentions of both finger basins (page 323 and listed as a part of the dessert service)
and also finger-glasses  which we've already noted a previous link.
It also mentions 'wine glass rinsers'.

The link on Babel wouldn’t show me anything but the first page so couldn’t see the context, so not sure if they used the names finger-glasses and finger basins in one list or if they were different names for the same thing given by different authors? I was looking through a 1875-1881 catalogue from Philip Pargeter on cmog today (link below) and noticed that they called their bowls ‘finger cups’. Also, they had significantly different shaped finger cups in the same catalogue so don’t think there were set rules for shape - should imagine it was the same in the 1830s.

3) Queen Victoria reigned from 1837 to 1901.  Could it have been produced for any number of reasons/occasions during that period? 
Perhaps the golden Jubilee in 1887 but would there not have been some record of this somewhere? 
Or simply as a gift to her from the City of London at some point in her reign?

In the front of the same cmog catalogue is a clipping from 1861 showing glass for the use of the Prince of Wales at the opening of the Middle Temple Library. ‘Designed and executed expressly for the Prince’s table’. It seems quite likely therefore, that there would have been many different items made for Victoria and family through her reign for various dinners, events etc.

https://www.cmog.org/library/manufacturer-registered-flower-centres-candelabras-vases-speciment-tubes-and-cut-engraved?search=library_collection%3A24172b728ffcedd7e9b3811ff6dec0d9&page=202
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