Topic: A Rare Unfinished Cordial, As It Came From The Mold c.1860s, Show & Tell

[cagney]

  I have the date incorrect and the wrong Leighton [my bad]. Should be Thomas Leighton c. 1839. Lots of Leighton's in the glass business in this period [all related].

  The "carafes" are very nice. I do not know why the author uses that term. For forever and a day the have been called a bar bottle or "decanter with bar lip" and that is how they are listed in the catalogue. Not ground for a stopper. A metal pourer would be fitted to the top, cork lined to stay to the bottle. Some involved a type of vertical cage with a small marble inside, on the shelf  the marble would cover the opening inside the pourer, when tilted to pour the marble would fall forward to the top of the cage and allow the goods to come out.The fancier the pour, the better the goods? East Cambridge is a colloquial term for N.E.G.co. A bit of poor editing I think.

I get the slide rule iphone analogy completely and will remember it.

[flying free]

Thanks for that information on the name of the bottle and the way it works.  I've seen that kind of lip before and wondered about it because to me it looks an unusual design.  I'm now wondering if what I'd been looking at was American    made for the kind of stopper you describe.

[cagney]

  Two of many types.

[flying free]

Fantastic thanks so much.  I've never seen anything like the one with the marble.  Very interesting.

m

[flying free]

  During my research I read that Mr. Magoun was a machinist before becoming involved in the glass business, a very good knowledge base to start with.
  I am familiar with your thread concerning the Queen Victoria  uranium bowl, quite interesting.
  The google book link seems to be a bit ephemeral. I think they rotate different selections from the book at any given time. Possibly my outdated browser. Anyway no. 65 page 127 the uranium large lacy compote I found extremely informative. Specifically, the letter [1845] from William Leighton Sr. to a Scottish colleague concerning the recipe for uranium glass.

I can't see this on my google search. It throws up very little in that book for me.  However in another search I see a ' canary yellow lacy compote in Princess Feather design identified as Boston and Sandwich Glass company between 1830 and 1850'.  That was in Magazine Antiques Volume 125 1984 page 770.  Is that the same one you mention? 
I wondered if you knew a specific date American companies might have been known to have started producing uranium glass please?  Just curious, given that letter, as I assume it would be after the letter (I had the letter as dated 1839?).

Actually this just came up on a second search: - 'Canary-yellow compote in Princess Feather design'- sold by Sotheby's as Sandwich Glass 1835-1840 (just in case the link disappears, for future reading/research it's a pressed glass piece in quite pale lemon yellow):
https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2022/property-from-the-collection-of-dr-larry-mccallister-2/a-large-princess-feather-pattern-canary-yellow

m

[Ekimp]

Thanks for that information on the name of the bottle and the way it works.  I've seen that kind of lip before and wondered about it because to me it looks an unusual design.  I'm now wondering if what I'd been looking at was American    made for the kind of stopper you describe.

McConnell says the bar-lip bottles were largely American but also shows an 1880 catalogue page from Ford Rankin, Holyrood, Glasgow, that shows a bar-lip bottle with a caged marble stopper like those Cagney showed.

[cagney]

  Sounds like the same compote. Princess Feather being the collector name for the lacy pattern in the bowl {the Sotheby's link did not load the picture for me}??
 As I read parts of your thread on the Queen Victoria bowl, I ask myself the exact same question. When did uranium begin here? I could not find a definitive date. The book in the link is the most up to date information on the subject I could find. In the summary included with the picture of the compote. They quote portions of the letter from Thomas Leighton to a Scottish colleague {Ford] c.1839 as follows:
  " You likewise informed me that to make your canary metal you used nothing but oxid[e] of uranium to your flint batch. You did not give me any quantity, but that I can find out by small experiments. If you please to give  me your proportions it will save me a lot of trouble". Also stated in the summary is that Boston & Sandwich Co. opened there "canary" furnace Feb. 1844


  If I had to bet, Would say Mr. Leighton and the N.E.G. co. beat B&S by a few years. He is also credited for the recipe for gold ruby to N.E.G. co. Prior to that they imported from England.

[flying free]

I'm very curious about the gold ruby information as well

This is from the Corning.  It's a history of gold ruby glass.  For more contemporary or recent development scroll down to the section headed 'Later Years' and then to the paragraph that begins 'In the 19th century, a more general interest in gold ruby glass was revived....'

Within that paragraph it states that in the later years the first to achieve success with re-discovering gold ruby glass was Johann Pohl of Harrach in 1835.  It does state that the knowledge spread but that gold ruby remained incredibly difficult to make.  It goes on to say that in 1851 the Great Exhibition 'featured displays of ruby glass from English companies such as G. Bacchus and Sons of Birmingham, the Falcon Glassworks of Apsley Pellatt, and W. H., B. and J. Richardson of Wordsley, and from the Baccarat firm in France (ibid., p. 132).'

There isn't any mention of American gold ruby makers.

https://www.cmog.org/article/gold-ruby-glass

[flying free]

However, from the way Leighton has written that request (In 1839) it does appear that the receiver (Ford?) had some uranium glass on view.
That is still 2 years after the 1837 Victoria bowls though.  And there is no proof that the recipient of Leighton's letter had actually made the uranium glass on view either.  Is that a fair comment or am I just overly suspicious  ?

I mean, the recipient could have shared his recipe with Leighton ... but we don't know that.  The recipient seems to have told Leighton that he just mixed uranium oxide in with his flint glass. Leighton seems to have been pressing for exact quantities and a recipe.  Odd. If it was so easy then he could have just experimented surely?  Although to be fair, I suspect uranium oxide was expensive and presumably not that easy to get hold of so experimenting might have been costly.  A known recipe would have saved money and time and been far more productive I guess.

I've just read that Thomas Leighton retired in 1843?  I don't know how to link the Journal of Glass Studies but it states it here:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24188443

[flying free]

Some information here that John Ford took on Holyrood Glassworks in 1839:
https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2887234

There appears to have been some gap between the death in 1818 of Wm Ford, who originally had the glassworks,  and John Ford his nephew, taking it on it 1839.

So the correspondence in 1839 seems to have been at time when John Ford took over the glassworks.  (he wasn't appointed glassmaker to QV until 1855).

This is an interesting digitisation from the Toledo Museum - the New England Glass company 1818-1888 (digitised in 2012)
https://archive.org/stream/newenglandglassc00tole/newenglandglassc00tole_djvu.txt


m