Glass Message Board
Glass Discussion & Research. NO IDENTIFICATION REQUESTS here please. => British & Irish Glass => Topic started by: antiquerose123 on May 02, 2010, 01:03:57 AM
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Just thought I would post this here for you guys to see....and what you think of this?
Ebay: Ebay-Click Here (http://cgi.ebay.com/McKee-Rock-Crystal-Electric-Lamp-Canary-Yellow-Vaseline_W0QQitemZ370371068909QQcategoryZ2697QQcmdZViewItem)
;)
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I suspect that Lustrousstone may wish to comment on this - but in her absence would suggest that we are back to the old chestnut of Yanks versus Brits. and nomenclature. Judging by the yellowish/greenish colour, then this piece contains Uranium to some degree - possibly - and if this is the case should flouresce in the presence of ultra violet light. That anyone should choose to call it vaseline glass is subjective - it may well look like the gooey stuff that you buy in the pharmacist/chemist - but for the sake of ease of undersanding would better be called simply Uranium glass. As a less serious suggestion, if the bulb holder were changed for a three pin bayonet fitting unit, then it would be possible to purchase an 80 or 125 watt U.V. bulb - plug in - and hey presto each time you switched on you would get a wonderful flourescent glow (provide the glass is U.V. of course), and would give a new meaning to bedtime stories ;D On reflection, however, in the light (no pun intended) of the dangers of short wave radiation - probably not to be recommended.
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opps - in fact I forgot to mention something more important. How do we arrive at calling this piece 'rock crystal' - have I missed something here, and is there a locality in the world lumps of this stuff occur naturally?
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McKee certainly did make uranium glass and that is the colour American purists would call vaseline. Rock Crystal is the pattern name, see
here and here There is even a lamp on the second link, which works better because it's a deep ruby and you can't see the cable. The uranium one could come and live at my house. McKee is handily marked; at least my single piece is.
Mod: Links to clicksnipwow removed as site is no longer connected to glass. Please visit http://chataboutdg.com/forums/ instead
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Judging by the yellowish/greenish colour, then this piece contains Uranium to some degree - possibly - and if this is the case should flouresce in the presence of ultra violet light. That anyone should choose to call it vaseline glass is subjective - it may well look like the gooey stuff that you buy in the pharmacist/chemist - but for the sake of ease of undersanding would better be called simply Uranium glass.
Just a comment on terminology:
If referred to as Vaseline glass, I think of it as a reference to color only.... although much early "Vaseline" glass does glow when subjected to UV. There is also glass out of Italy and now China, and I am sure other locations, which could be called Vaseline based on the color, but is not UV reactive in the least. I have an Italian dish you would think is going to glow brightly, and in fact is not in the least UV reactive....
Since the presence of "Uranium" would cause the glass to glow when subjected to UV light, calling all glass this color "Uranium", IMHO would lead to a great deal of confusion, as I think it would lead many people to assume it would glow with UV light....
Craig
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I was confused with the "rock crystal" thing - until I read the ad and it refers to the kind of flower on the pattern.
Only glass with uranium in it should be called Uranium glass.
And it's not remotely (or even closely) dangerous.
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Craig - quite obviously my reference to 'glowing', was only if the material contained Uranium - apologies if my explanation was less than clear, and like Sue I mis-interpreted the meaning of rock crystal. My comment about the potential danger, was not of course from the glass (I have shed loads of it in the house) but rather from the U.V. bulb, which apparently if you stare at for too long may damage eyesight. Certainly if the envelope breaks you should never look at the naked filament. However, it was a less than serious comment, since no one is going to use a three pin 125 watt U.V. bulb at their bedside......at least I don't think so (I am not referring to blacklight tubes).
As a suggestion to ease the confusion, how about this.......
All green glass (irrespective of shade) containing U..... we call simply Uranium glass ..........all green glass (with a yellowish hue) but without U. ....we call Vaseline glass........glass which is simply green (without any hue) we call (wait for it.............green glass) :) Might this avoid some of the terminology problems, which as Craig points out, is presently less than clear because of the situation where some 'Vaseline' glass does have U. and some doesn't, but is all lumped together as 'Vaseline' glass. See you all tomorrow after my boot sale (weather permitting).
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As a collector, I call it all uranium glass regardless of colour if it contains uranium and there are more shades beyond yellow and green. It's the American purists who only collect glass that is coloured solely with uranium (i.e., transparent yellow) that call it vaseline. They have a strict definition of vaseline; the rest of the world is just confused about what it is, as Craig demonstrates :kissy:
I confess to using vaseline and uranium in ebay listings though.
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There are also the terms "Annageld" and "Annagrun", which I personally like very much. Both refer to glass coloured with Uranium. The German chap who, I believe, first used uranuim to colour glass named the two basic colours produced after his wife, Anna. Geld for gold and grun for green, obviously.
You know where you are with those. :thup:
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hello Sue - will you forgive me for being Mr. Picky:) Think the guy you have in mind was Josef Riedel - who at the time he lived was in fact a Bohemian (and probably very proud of his nationality). You're right about his wife though, but I think in fact it was 'Annagelb', rather than 'geld. Annagrun being the yellowish green sort apparently, and Annagelb being the greenish yellow sort. You say that 'you know where you are with those'. But I'm confused - the attached pictures are of two pieces that I've acquired over the past year or so - both flouresce deep green (or would do if the torch was working o.k.) but I'm not sure now which sort they are - they aren't green or yellow really. Of course, they may be nothing to do with Riedel's names at all. Can you help please. I'm assuming that this geenish yellow (or vice versa) refers to the daylight image, and not the colour you get when they flouresce .. after all Riedel would have known nothing about ultra violet light, of course ;D. What do you think, and thanks for your time by the way. .......sorry, seem to have lost the ability to add pics. will try again in a minute.
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:-[
I should have dug my book out to check, sincere apologies, but it would have meant a lot of heavy lifting to find the right one.
You're perfectly right to be Mr. Picky - thanks so much for correcting me. :-*
Naturally though, the names refer to the colour of the glass in daylight.
kindest wishes,
Ms. Sloppy.
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so, from Mr. Thicky - here are the pictures of my brownish/yellowish goblet and desert dish (?). thanks also to Sue and for my next trick.........
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:spls:
I'd call those Annagelb, given they're ambery yellow - not even remotely green....... (until you do "tricks" with an uv light, but that doesn't count. :P )
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thanks Anne, and I shall now know for the future :)
Guess you are right Sue, so I shall mark these down as 'gelb - they certainly have a yellowish brown look. If anyone is able to put up some pictures of 'grun, then that might be helpful.
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http://www.glassmessages.com/index.php/topic,33279.0.html
Have a peek at some of Christine's listings!
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This is quoted from http://www.pressglas-korrespondenz.de/aktuelles/pdf/riedel-uranglas.pdf :
„Schon Franz Anton Riedel (1786-1844) [SG: Franz
Xaver Anton] hatte sich „an der Erfindung des mit Uranoxyden
gefärbten Glases beteiligt“. [Hais 1988] Die
später weltberühmt gewordenen Bezeichnungen „Annagelb“
und Annagrün“ bzw. „Eleonorengrün“ dürften
folglich noch aus der Zeit Franz Anton Riedels
stammen, der die neuen Glassorten nach seinen Töchtern
Anna Maria (geb. 1819) und Eleonora (geb.
1820) benannte. Die frühesten bekannt gewordenen
„annagelben“ und eleonorengrünen“ Gläser tragen die
Jahreszahlen 1841 (vgl. Riedel 1991, Abb. 91).
"Franz Anton Riedel (1786-1844) named the newly invented glass colours after his daughters Anna Maria (born 1819) and Eleonora (born 1820)":
yellow-green = Anna-gelb
strong-green = Eleonoren-grün
:nogoss: ;D
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Those are amber (and very nice). Amber uranium glass was produced by several companies, including Thomas Webb. They called theirs Sunshine Amber.
The top pic is some continental amber uranium. The next pic is also amber, but not Webb
Annagelb only contains uranium as a colorant and generally appears a pale yellow green in daylight and more yellow if there is no UV around (third pic). It's the colour of Davidson's Primrose. It only seems to be truly yellow when there almost no transmitted light, for example, in Walsh's Primrose, which is uranium yellow over white, or when used in genuine flint glass, when it's known as canary flint and weighs a ton (fourth pic).
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A piece of Primrose (top) and Webb I think rather than Walsh, and my pride and joy my Webb's Gay glass cut with water lilies and in Sunshine Amber
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if I may reply to Pamela first ........
Sorry, my German is inadequate to understand fully your extract from the 'pressglas-korrespondenz' - however, do I understand you correctly that whilst Josef Riedel discovered the process of adding Uranium to glass, it was in fact Franz Anton who gave us the names Annagrun and Annagelb - in reference to his daughters. The reason for asking this is because, as was implied earlier in this thread, one of my glass dictionaries suggests that 'Annagrun' was named after Josef's wife....."as was also Annagelb".......and my only other dictionary suggests also that.........."Annagrun and Annagelb- introduced by Josef Riedel's Dolny Polubny factory, and named after his wife, Anna Maria". However, it seems that in the light of what you say, these books are probably innacurate.
References: 'An Illustrated Dictionary of Glass - Thames & Hundson - 1977
' The Encyclopedia of Glass - Edited by Phoebe Phillips - PP/H Heinemann - 1981
Books such as dictionaries suffer probably more than most from inaccuracies (too many details to be checked, so SOME editors go for the quick fix, and simply copy from another dictionary) - Samuel Johnson excepted of course ;D However, as Lustrousstone now seems to indicating - my pieces are neither :'( - unfortunately, I don't have time to reply to Lustrousstone this evening, so will have to be tomorrow.
thanks again Pamela.
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Your pieces are much less common!! :mrgreen:
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Christine I'm one American that does not use the term Vaseline so there may be some hope. I use Uranium or reactive & when questioned it give me the opportunity to inform folks that Vaseline is a fictional term evidently invented by us (us meaning us in the U.S.) & while it can be somewhat descriptive its misleading since glass of many colors can glow if any of the Uranium Oxides were used in the batch formula. Ken
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;D Join the club. It's hard enough explaining that it has to be the right sort of glow to contain uranium...
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Sorry Lustrousstone - wrong emoticon - when I have worked all this out, am sure I will appreciate a lot more what I actually have. Webb is a favourite of mine, so would be nice if it had been theirs. Is there a good book about 'Webb' production (with plenty of pictures) that I can get hold of? cheers
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They may be Webb, just not Sunshine Amber. Look in Skelcher
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I've dug my reference book out, and it seems we have another to add to the list of factual errors...
It's "Glass Source Book" by Jo Marshall, p.101.
"Two unusual colours were produced in the 1830s by Joseph Reidel in the Isergebirge, usung uranium to produce a greenish-yellow and a yellowish-green glass named Annagrum and Annagelb after his wife Anna."
(the Annageld was completely my mistake, though.)
:thup: I wondered if we'd see your fabulous Webb vase, Christine! :D
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I did consider starting a new post, but consider it relates to points already made, so remained here. Without getting too deep, I have followed the suggestion and looked again at some of my coloured 'Webb' (Thomas Webb) - re Skelcher etc.
Something I hadn't fully realized was the unfortunate image/colour difference between the examples of 'Sunshine Amber' shown in Barrie Skelcher's two books. You would be forgiven for thinking that the very odd looking pictures in the earlier volume were not in fact the same type of glass as shown in the later book, where pictures are very realistic. I don't recall this very unfortunate difference being mentioned in the recent review of the later book.
Oddly, Skelcher doesn't refer to the expression 'Gay Glass'. The attached pictures show a couple of standard 'Amber' Bull's Eye bowls (non Ur.) - plus a small bowl in yellowish green glass which flouresces, so I'm thinking this is from the 'Gay Glass' range, but it appears to be far too pale to be 'Amber Sunshine'. On the Glasseye web site, there is mention of a lighter colour called 'Spring Sunshine'(?) - might it be this?
Regrettaly, in the light of comments earlier in this thread, the titles of the books in question are doubtless mis-leading - although as they are U.S. productions it is understandable :), but I certainly wouldn't be without them.
I see also Sue that your book mis-spells Josef's name ;)
References: The Big Book of Vaseline Glass - 2002...........and Vaseline Glassware - 2007
both by Barrie Skelcher and published by Schiffer.
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Gay Glass was a range of glassware introduced in 1933 that came in four patterns (plain, Venetian Ripple, Old English Bullseye and Cut Water Lily) and four colours (crystal, Spring {eau de nil}, Sunshine {golden amber} and Evergreen {old Bristol green}. See the advert in Hajdamach, 20th Century British Glass.
Your bowls are both Bullseye but I don't know for how long the Gay Glass marketing tag was used. I think the thinness of the glass makes the uranium not look like Sunshine. Uranium glass has to be got just right to see its true colour.
I don't recall this very unfortunate difference being mentioned in the recent review of the later book.
It was a general first impressions review. I didn't do a section by section comparison!
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thanks Christine. In fact one book (out of dozens no doubt), that I don't yet have is Hajdamach, C20 British Glass. Must get it soon, as it appears to be highly recommended (I do have his volume for C19 material - which is very good).
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As a parting shot on this thread - and needing Lustrousstone's input again please - I am attaching some pictures of what I believe is genuine Webb's Gay Glass in Golden Amber Sunshine (Uranium). Height is about 6", and the thickness is something like 4mm - 4.5mm (sorry for mixing metric and imperial). This piece is a really rich amber, in Bull's Eye pattern, and has the etched "Made in - Webbs - England", in the centre of the polished pontil mark. Would appreciate an expert's opinion please.
"It was a general first impressions review. I didn't do a section by section comparison"! - do you think this now alters your opinion about the second volume - exonerate it - and lift it's value a bit more, after all, your review was rather scathing of the author's later offering ;D ;D