I don't have a Mrs Beeton's. Were there original colour plates in it or drawings from the first time she produced it repeated over the editions?
Or was there only one edition ? Wikipedia says it was first produced in 1861 which is 25years, quite a long time from 1837 in fashion/style I think though?
I've just looked up some picture and come across a plate where I'm pretty sure, if it's from her book, the colour glass centrepiece is from c.1870s. Are there plates in the appendix of glassware items?
Just going back to the use of the word 'topaz' on the descriptions.
This was 1837. Did the descriptor 'topaz' mean coloured with uranium glass type colour, or did it mean 'amber' or a paler version of amber?
In Apsley Pellatt (1849) pp73 ( so 13 years after the Guildhall banquet)
he writes of uranium being used for gold topaz and ' it has been much in demand for hock glasses and decanters, and many ornamental articles of glass;...'
However, on page 71/72 he also writes:
'Annealing may sometimes appear complete in Glass articles that have borne the friction of deep cutting; which, when long after exposed to the influence of the atmosphere, become fractured, as it were, spontaneously. A large quantity of Flint,or compound glass, manufactured at the Falcon Works, (of beautiful topaz tint, coloured by uranium, which became richer in hue by diminishing the usual proportion of lead, and by increasing the alkali,) fractured three months after it was cut. Complaints from purchasers at home and abroad reached the Works, and the whole had to be replaced at the expense of the manufacturer.'