Topic: Topaz or Canary or Victoria

[flying free]

Your amber fussbecher is cased amber over clear and is beautiful.
I think it's quite old/first half1800s given the cutting on the foot.

[flying free]

  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.

I am not a chemist and don't really understand all(any!) detail however I think Spiegl said there were two or three suppliers of Uranium oxide and that for some reason they were different to each other producing maybe different colours of uranium glass? Green and yellow?

I hope I was right on Harrach using lead glass but I'm not entirely sure!

REALLY interesting that the Steuben Mandarin yellow has examples spontaneously cracking.  Is this an example of Pellatt's uranium glass batch that all fell to bits and had to be entirely replaced at the cost of the Falcon Glassworks?  Or is Steuben Mandarin not uranium glass?  It does seem that yellow glass was difficult to make from reading W. Spiegl or rather if I've understood it correctly (not a given).

[flying free]

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

With reference my previous comment on the violet flask you show attributed as American, looking so remarkably similar to the one Spiegl shows, Spiegl also says this of violet glass (my bold):
'The use of transparent mass coloring (Fig. III.5) as well as violet-covered glasses could have largely corresponded to the »light violet« according to Hafenbrädl.
The difficulties in manufacturing seem to have been the main reason why Biedermeier glasses colored with manganese dioxide are rare,
although the violet, for example, looks very attractive in solid-colored violet alabaster glasses and looks very delicate and elegant as an external cover of colorless glasses with cut edges.'

So it is interesting if it's the case that in Bohemia and in America they were both producing a remarkably similar design in a remarkably similar difficult colourway.

[flying free]

  Pictured is my candidate for Chameleon glass

The example Neuwirth W. gives in Farbenglas I of Chameleon glass page 179 is actually an almost citrine coloured  oily looking (slightly opalescent looking although I don't think it is opalescent, but very transparent still) jug in a yellow transparent glass .  It is from J. Meyr, Adolfshutte before 1837.  It's actually described as yellowish green cut glass.
But it looks slightly oily slightly opalescent citrine colour in the photograph.

Very different to your goblet colour here:
https://www.glassmessages.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=73090.0;attach=262544;image

It is actually very like my little toilet bottle/lamp base here although perhaps looking a tiny bit more yellow than my bottle appears in my photo:
https://www.glassmessages.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=73090.0;attach=262542;image

Neuwirth gives a  description on page 276 :

' The color glass specialists at Adolfshutte succeeded with this creation prior to 1837.  J. B. Eisner lists a group of "chameleon" glasses which contain uranium and chromium oxides (Blau, 1940, p.17)'.

From my reading this is an actual documented example of what was called 'chameleon' glass.

[flying free]

Interestingly Neuwirth says on page 277 Farbenglas I:

'The history of uranium glass lies in obscurity'.

[flying free]

With reference my previous comment on the violet flask you show attributed as American, looking so remarkably similar to the one Spiegl shows, Spiegl also says this of violet glass (my bold):
'The use of transparent mass coloring (Fig. III.5) as well as violet-covered glasses could have largely corresponded to the »light violet« according to Hafenbrädl.
The difficulties in manufacturing seem to have been the main reason why Biedermeier glasses colored with manganese dioxide are rare,
although the violet, for example, looks very attractive in solid-colored violet alabaster glasses and looks very delicate and elegant as an external cover of colorless glasses with cut edges.'

So it is interesting if it's the case that in Bohemia and in America they were both producing a remarkably similar design in a remarkably similar difficult colourway.

Not the same pattern but Pressglas-korrespondenz shows a ' Plattflasche ' here (Glasfabrik Langerswald 1840) so using Plattflasche as a search term may throw up more comparisons?
https://www.pressglas-korrespondenz.de/aktuelles/pdf/pk-2018-1w-varl-vivat-annales-aihv-2015.pdf

[flying free]

 
  Pictured is my candidate for Chameleon glass

Some similarities in colour and perhaps base of foot cutting and shoulder panel design with this one:
https://antikes-glas.de/products/Grosser-Fussbecher-mit-geschnittenen-Allegorien-Bohmen-um-1835-45-p581472605

They have it as c. 1835-1845 and probably Neuwelt.

[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

Looking for something else as you do -
From Neuwelt to the Whole World, Mergl J. page 83
A double overlay becher in pink and white with an embedded paste portrait of Wenzel Batka.  The caption reads
'In the 1840s Wenzel Batka was one of the main suppliers of raw materials (chemicals) to the Neuwelt glassworks.'

[cagney]

  Considering Stiegel and the glassworkers brought over were all German it is not too much of a stretch to assign an American attribution. There was a large contingent of German/Dutch settlers in the Pennsylvania colony as well. Still, the similarities are Striking.
 As for Mandarin Yellow, Paul V. Gardner in his book THE GLASS OF FREDERICK CARTER ,1971 uses the term, the "fugitive" quality of the glass as if some ingredient is breaking out  [hostile] of  the mix. This may have been Pellat's problem as well. I have mentioned this before and I think it deserves repeating, Leighton's recipe for Canary or Victoria first calls for the making of cullet to add to the batch from his no.1 flint glass. A form of quality control I think. CMOG has a handful of Mandarin Yellow examples.

  Do have or have access to the book BOHEMIAN GLASS 1400-1989 ? By Syvia Petrova and Jean Luc Olivie, 1990.
 

[cagney]

  Another advertisement for Bohemian glass c. 1852. The advertisement described in reply #32 in this thread is telling in one other aspect as the term Victoria Emerald is used as a color they make and somewhat confirms my thinking that Victoria is a green version of Canary. At least in America anyway.