Topic: Black Glass / Gold Vases - D'Humy, IOW, Stuart Strathearn...

[pattanne]

I recently bought two small Straethern vases from ebay, not realising that they were 3" high. I do have a full size daffodil vase in the same style, stamped on the base.  This vase was bought for my Mom & Dads 40th wedding anniversary in 1986 and has been backward and forward to Australia a few times.  I also have another vase, shaped like a ships decanter which is a thicker glass than the others, no mark on the bottom though. Do they have any value, any help would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks

Pat

[chopin-liszt]

:shock:

The black and gold Stuart Strathearn bits are by Iestyn Davies, using techniques he learned at Isle of Wight Studio Glass. Michael Harris and William Walker developed these in conjunction with each other, producing the award winning Azurene range.

[Frank]

Also, unmarked ones could be IOW originals, or Tweedsmuir or Caithness or ...

I am currently following a lead on the same technique having been used long before IOW Azurene. It would seem nothing is ever that original. A number of other glassworks also produced similar pieces. Tweedsmuir Glass versions are particularly thick glass, only identifiable by label. I will get some of my examples on the site one day...

[pattanne]

I have been trying to put a couple of photos on here but for some reason cannot get past the first page, on glass gallery, it would not let me login and eventually I found a message that said I was "currently banned from this site" but how come I have managed to post this message!!!  What have I done?

Pat (the innocent!)

[archiveIOWSG]

Hi
It will be very interesting to see your findings Frank.

[Anne]

I have been trying to put a couple of photos on here but for some reason cannot get past the first page, on glass gallery, it would not let me login and eventually I found a message that said I was "currently banned from this site" but how come I have managed to post this message!!!  What have I done?

Pat (the innocent!)

Hi Pat, you cannot login to GlassGallery until you have activated your account there. You will have been sent an e-mail with a link to click to activate it: this verifies your e-mail address is valid. Once you've done that you can log in. The ban happens when you try unsuccessfully to log on several times - to protect the Gallery against brute-force attacks it only allows so many tries before you get locked out for a short period of time. It's not a permanent ban so don't worry.

If you've not received the e-mail (they sometimes do get lost in cyber-space or caught in badly-setup spam filters) drop me a line directly (see e-mail button below) and I'll activate you manually.

[Frank]

Use of gold foil goes back to 1930's-30's at least e.g. Carlo Scarpa for MVM Cappellin and C. 1929 to 1930. Probably find earler examples too.

[Frank]

Somewhere, over the past year I came across another example of gold foil on black but it eludes me now. It went on backburner mode as I have too many threads active right now and is somewhere in a pile of at least 100 recent documents piled up near my desk :? will keep an eye open for it now.

Meanwhile... looking for some roots, I came across a reference in Skelley - Modern Fine Glass (1937), to a 3rd to 4th century Rhenish glass known as 'fondi d'oro' a-  layer of gold etched and covered in clear glass. I have no more information on that technique though, anybody else.  :?:

[pattanne]

Well, I managed to get the photos of my vases saved onto the Glass Gallery, they are on page 6!! I'm a little embarassed that I can't put the link on here  :oops:

The three have a mark with Stuart Straethern on them these are of a thinner glass and the one that is a ships decanter shape is thicker glass and has a crown on the bottom, there must have been a label on there at sometime, but is no longer there.

When we visited Australia in 2002 we visited a shop on the Gold Coast, they had some glassware in blue with the goldleaf on. The shop owner said that the artist that made them studied under a gentleman that worked in the glass houses in the Black Country. How strange to go all that way and find articles like that.

If anyone can let me know anymore about them I would be grateful.

Many thanks

Pat


Moderator: Links added below Pat, (if you look undeneath each image there's a box that says File Information... look down it until you see the line starting URL and copy the link there - it will always end with a dash and a number - then just paste that link into your post here on the board... you don't even need to use the BB code tags to make it show as a link it just happens.)

http://glassgallery.yobunny.org.uk/displayimage.php?pos=-3859
http://glassgallery.yobunny.org.uk/displayimage.php?pos=-3858
http://glassgallery.yobunny.org.uk/displayimage.php?pos=-3857

[Frank]

Hajdamach (British Glass 1800-1914) had the answer to this, not the earlier Rhenish version - which still needs clarification but to a Victorian patent. But as with any book description you need to locate an image that ties in with the investigation and Hajdamach lacked that.

This missing link was turned up by David and is shown below. The example is Paul Raoul de Facheux D'Humy and dates to 1878.



This clearly relates the D'Humy patent to the styles such as IOW Aurene, Stuart Strathearn's "Ebony & Gold" and similar decoration by many others.

On page 327-8 of Hajdamach is a description of the process patented by D'Humy who traded in London, UK, c1880, as Aurora Glass Co and Vasa Murrhina Glass Co. Very little is known about him - but he gave examples of his work to the British Museum. This ensured their documentation and could well have been seen by the various glassmakers that rediscovered the technique since then.

Does anyone have any colour pictures of this glass in their libraries?

This subject still needs data on the 3rd to 4th century Rhenish 'fondi d'oro' glass for excluding or including it.