Topic: Topaz or Canary or Victoria

[cagney]

  The term topaz in this instance a bit misleading I think. I relate it to the common glass outlined further in the paragraph. A more brownish yellow or dark as he terms it.The use of soda or sulphate of soda necessitates the use of charcoal according to George W. Leightons batch book. Following several recipes for "cheap" glass he comments further on 'soda metal'. see first photo.

  William T. Gillinders treatise on glassmaking c.1851 gives a handful of different recipes for yellow flint glass, one involves Crocus Martus as coloring agent, a second uses Naples yellow as coloring agent and the last Uranium for "Victoria Yellow or Topaz'. I think a true transparent yellow in flint glass hard to come by, as the huge popularity of Uranium based yellow might suggest.

  Heisey's experiments c.1930 to create a lead based transparent yellow culminated in their successful Sahara color which uses non of the previous  ingredients as a coloring agent. The main coloring agents in Sahara are cerium hydrate and titanium oxide. Seems to be a totally new formula. A nice yellow I think. Second photo.

[flying free]

That's a lovely yellow. Very like the citrine colour I associate with mid century Czech glass.

Yes, I understand what you mean about the colour they seem to be describing as compared to recipes quoting uranium and topaz or Victoria yellow glass. 
I think I was just trying to go back as far as possible and as close as possible to 1837 to see what reports were actually calling or describing as 'topaz' glass at the time of the Queen Victoria banquet.  Mainly because terms/colour names change over time it seems.  For example one company might call something topaz and refer to uranium inclusion and suddenly that can become the 'new' term for it if you see what I mean?

If I recall correctly there is some reference to this problem written in the Farbenglas books whereby say, 1830s exhibition reports include things like 'Chameleon glass' but no one knows what that really looks like.

So for example we are calling this item on the thread linked below 'amber uranium' glass.  It's an amber brown colour.  It's completely different to the colour of the QV bowls which to me in real life looked like the yellow Walsh Walsh uranium glass I own.
Was this perhaps the colour of the 'topaz' glass referred to in the reports of the QV banquet? Or was it yellow like the Walsh Walsh uranium yellow of my glasses?
https://www.glassmessages.com/index.php/topic,73683.msg409214.html#msg409214


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[cagney]

  Topaz I think represents an early term and an indication of what type of yellow you were liable to get using uranium, insofar as glass formulas anyway. A  shorting of the term topasglas.

   I am in complete sympathy with you on the various cryptic terms inserted here and there and then left buried.  Chameleon glass does seem to have been a thing. From the "Report of the Committee on Exhibitions of the Franklin Institute" 1847 #638 glassware from the Union Glass Works.  " The articles, consisting chiefly of cologne and toilet bottles,-opal,turquoise,green,chameleon &c., were made in an open  or hollow ware furnace, of bottle glass. Many of the tints are as rich as would be expected in flint glass.The hock and toilet bottles, of colored opaque body, are considered as deserving a First Premium. A year later in a advertising circular put out by the same company amongst Druggist and other wares they list "Bohemian and colored glass" then go on to list colors "Ruby,Canary, Turquoise, Victoria Emerald" below this another listing "emeralds, blues,Greens,Ambers,Purples,Amethyst, Amarite,Black, White, Agate, and Chameleon . Also mentioned is "Enamels of every Colour'.

  As to the QV bowl and your thread you seem to be ' between a rock and a hard place " as we say over here. On the one hand you the Powell/Whitefriars experimental formulas of 1833-1836, on the other hand you have Ford making Canary glass 1839. No actual documentation of any English glassworks producing such glass in 1837.  I commend you on your fortitude, savy and determination. Your thread is is almost becoming a database on the subject.

  NevB's gobleti interesting. From the photos I cannot tell what uranium brings to the glass color. Seems to look like a nice medium amber, probably should ask Nev.

   I leave you with this tidbit from Deming Jarves agent [spy?] in Europe from a letter sent probably 1850 s

[flying free]

oooh thanks for that spy letter!  sent possibly 1850s?  So perhaps getting hold of uranium oxide wasn't that easy at that time if he was suggesting getting it from France?

 'better than the English'? that's an interesting comment in the letter. What does it refer to I wonder -  uranium oxide mined from English source (Cornwall?) or just uranium oxide available to buy in England? If it was just uranium oxide available to buy in England which may have come from Bohemia (?) why would it be different to that available in France. 
I think France did have a mine for Uranium oxide (need to check that) so I wonder if it was just a piece of politics in the letter, 'whispering' that the French mined (if it was) uranium oxide was better than the Bohemian oxide.  Certainly at the Great Exhibition in 1851 a major middleman of Bohemian uranium oxide (Can't remember his name now)  was showing it there and I've found documents where he was selling it.




RE Chameleon Glass
see here for Bohemian Chameleon Glass :
https://www.glassmessages.com/index.php/topic,70066.msg390747.html#msg390747

Quote
'Just going back to Apsley Pellatt's mention of chameleon glass in the book dated 1849:
In Farbenglass II, Neuwirth, pp276, there is a chapter titled 'Chameleon Glass where it says:
-  Egermann exhibited a number of "chameleon beakers" in 1835.  And
- 'The colour glass specialists at Adolfhutte succeeded with this creation prior to 1837' (a jug is shown and it is inventoried in the Technical Museum Wien along with date and the inventory 'speaks of "chameleon glass"'. And
- 'J.B. Eisner lists a group of "chameleon" glasses which contain uranium and chromium oxides (Blau,1940, p.17)''

So 'chameleon glass' as a descriptor seems to have been used before 1837 in Bohemia and mentioned by Pellatt in his book of 1849.  I wonder was he referring to Bohemian glass? - Unquote





Yes I think the Queen Victoria bowl thread has become a book unfortunately.  I talk too much!
 I don't even own the  bowl so I don't know why I care that much
I think it's because I find it really irksome when makers are noted but no definitive source for it. And the fact that bowl was originally promoted as by James Powell and Sons and miraculously became 'by Davenport' when it transferred museums piqued my curiosity.


 

[flying free]

...
 'better than the English'? that's an interesting comment in the letter. What does it refer to I wonder -  uranium oxide mined from English ... Certainly at the Great Exhibition in 1851 a major middleman of Bohemian uranium oxide (Can't remember his name now)  was showing it there and I've found documents where he was selling it.

Wenzel Batka was the name of the person with uranium oxide at the Great Exhibition in 1851:
See page 1007 - no.9 - in the Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue part IV The Great Exhibition:



https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Official_Descriptive_and_Illustrated_Cat/wX9lTww80aAC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=uranium+oxide+bohemia&pg=PA1007&printsec=frontcover

Spiegl seems to say here in Glasforschung page 10 and 11 that there were two perhaps three producers of uranium glass which could be bought in a chemically pure state by 1840
quote ' This means that since 1840 at the latest, the foundries were no longer dependent on producing coloring additives to the mixture themselves in all cases, but could buy them in a chemically pure state.'

Source: Spiegl W. , Farbige Gläser  - Glas Forschung info
http://www.glas-forschung.info/pageone/pdf/farbglas.pdf

I've used google translate so I don't know if the translation is absolutely accurate but it seems to me to say that uranium oxide? could be bought ready made from 1840.

[flying free]

in the right hand column on page 11 Spiegl lists items shown by Neuwelt at the 1835 exhibition which include toilet bottles,stained green and gilded in chrysoprase composition and goldtopaz composition:
http://www.glas-forschung.info/pageone/pdf/farbglas.pdf

I have a toilet bottle in uranium glass I think dates to c.1840.  On page 15 he shows two bechers in light and darker green opaline glass and the caption says they are 'Chrysopras-glas'.
There is a transparent yellowish uranium glass bowl shown just described as yellow uranium glass.

Page 17 talks about how difficult it was to produce yellow glass!

on page 18 he says
'During the 1840s, yellow uranium glass (“Annagelb”, “Eleonore yellow”) became a popular fashion colour. Not only souvenir and friendship glasses, but also, to a considerable extent, everyday objects such as bowls, bottles and decanters were made from it. The glasses appear yellow-green when viewed from above in daylight, and light yellow when viewed through. They display a peculiar, changing play of colors, particularly in striking sunlight, which is related to the dichroism of the glasses in ultraviolet radiation. The fluorescence effect is most beautiful in the glasses that have a yellow tint. In the types tinted green with copper oxide, the fluorescence in ultraviolet light is weaker or absent. "Isabell" was the name of a matt yellow opaque glass from the Harrach glassworks that was first produced in 1838 and is probably a uranium color, as was the "lemon yellow bone glass" from this glassworks from 1841. Both colors are very rare. The two terms do not appear in Vinzenz Pohl’s recipe booklet.'

But again, this was 1840s for the yellow uranium glass.  Not 1837.

The Queen Victoria bowl in real life to me looked more like my Walsh Walsh tumbler in the pic below.
These were taken in the evening under LED light - rubbish lighting. I actually think the toilet bottle is maybe a lamp and is North Bohemian (source Das Bohmische Glas item with same enamelling) but I don't know which glashutten.  It is also much zingier in colour in daylight whereas it bizarrely looks 'citrine' coloured in the photo on white,  but all I have in the kitchen at the mo (night) is led lighting

[flying free]

and Correction -
Wenzel Batka was a producer of 'chemical products'.

Source . Spiegl Walter.  http://www.glas-forschung.info/pageone/pdf/farbglas.pdf


1891 book says uranium glass was sometimes called Chameleon glass - see page 289;
https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Popular_Lectures_and_Addresses_Constitut/W0QKAAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Chameleon+Glass&pg=PA289&printsec=frontcover

[cagney]

  Yes, the "better than the English" I think relates to purity. Reply#111 In your QV thread mentions pitchblendes "nature and prejudice to copper ore". GILLINDERS TREATISE  in relation to Victoria yellow or Topaz states at the end [ page 107 ] "by adding the copper, the color may be made as green a tinge as you wish it". To get a good yellow I would think the copper would have to be refined out or at least kept to a minimum. Whitman mentioned in the letter probably a wholesaler and may be sourcing  uraniumm from Bohemia.

  The processing scheme being set up in Bohemia mentioned in your QV thread#127, makes perfect sense to me considering uranium is being used in a wide array of products usually as a pigment from fine china to wallpaper. Purity matters, there is money to be made here.

 The information in your QV thread #146 stating that Harrachs normal output was lead based combined with the statement in THE PRACTICAL MECHANIC AND ENGINEER 1845 that there is only one glassworks in the region making lead glass tells me that Harrachs would be an obvious contender if indeed the QV bowl had a secret Bohemian lineage.

  The Waiter Spiegl link has blown my mind on two counts. First is the Wintenburgh opaque yellow tumbler on page 17, this color is an excellent match to Steubens Mandarin Yellow, of which probably half of examples extant have spontaneously cracked, very rare. Second is the the flask in the violet section. The design elements of what we call Diamond and daisey and checkered diamond are known from two separate 18th century glassworks in America Stiegels and Amelungs respectively, to this day they still insist that there is no known correlation in Europe to the Stiegels diamond and daisey. These scholars or whatever should leave their bubbles more often.

  Pictured is my candidate for Chameleon glass

[cagney]

  Stiegel diamond daisey bottle attributed to American Flint Glass Manufactory 1764-74.

[flying free]

hmmm.  That violet flask is so similar in colour and design one could almost say it came from the same source as this one in Walter Spiegl's publication - page 24:
http://www.glas-forschung.info/pageone/pdf/farbglas.pdf