Glass Message Board
Glass Discussion & Research. NO IDENTIFICATION REQUESTS here please. => British & Irish Glass => Topic started by: david31162 on April 09, 2006, 11:11:39 AM
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The carboot season started properly today! Have i got my first piece of Nailsea ? If it is, its the first piece ive found in over 15 years of searching. Im i right or does the search go on?
The first person(a dealer) who got to it put it down, claiming that one end looked as though it had been broken!
David.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v210/david-dj/IMG_1058.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v210/david-dj/IMG_1059.jpg
Thank you
David
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This does not strike me as Nailsea "type" altho I do not pretend to be expert in that type of glass.
On a recent TV program a quite impressive collection of rolling pins which DID include a few of the Nailsea type were auctioned and fetched less than £10 a piece. I was surprised at the low figure.
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Oh well, ill keep looking. It just reminded me of some id seen before somewhere. Thanks anyway, no real loss only £4 and id still have bought it Nailsea or not.
Thanks David
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Looks like Nailsea to me - either that or Sunderland ?
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I'd have said Nailsea and I've seen a few with the different ends.
Paul
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I stand corrected and learning....
Until now I thought of Nailsea as the style shown on the cover of this book
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/NAILSEA-GLASS-by-KEITH-VINCENT-DJ-1st-MINT-RARE-OOP_W0QQitemZ7019935115
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Yep nailsea, the broken end were the pontil was, you can get them with hand painted ships on the sides , sailors used to bring them back full spices from far away places, they used to just put a cork in the open end to stop the spice from falling out
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... you can get them with hand painted ships on the sides, sailors used to bring them back full spices from far away places, they used to just put a cork in the open end to stop the spice from falling out ...
Ray, this is an interesting theory, and not one I have heard before. Do you have a source for it? I had always assumed that open-ended examples were for filling with ice, but I cannot cite an authoritative source for that opinion. It just illustrates how easy it is to make assumptions. They could have been both, of course, gifts filled full of spice, intended to be later used with ice.
I had always understood that these rolling pins are British or English, and date back as far as the early 19th century, being frequently and rather loosely classified as "friggers". Large numbers were certainly made in Sunderland, as many survive decorated with the bridge, and can be dated to a certain extent by the changes to the bridge. They were also decorated with the Tyne Bridge at Newcastle, usually with a little train on the top shelf, but no puffs of smoke, which was a later artistic device. So it is reasonable to assume that they were also made on Tyneside.
David's example is a beauty and must be quite early.
Bernard C. 8)
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Sailors, Ornaments only ! .......and Swansea !!
http://www.swanseaheritage.net/article/gat.asp?ARTICLE_ID=220
Sailor's Commemorative Glass Rolling Pin
http://www.vallejogallery.com/item.php?id=22
History - ENGLISH ANTIQUE GLASS ROLLING PINS
http://www.1st-glass.1st-things.com/gallery-victorian/slides/antique-glass-rolling-pins.html
Bristol Blue Glass 'Sweetheart' Rolling Pin
http://www.1st-glass.1st-things.com/gallery-victorian/slides/bristolbluerollingpin.html
S.West Maritime History Soc - Discussion
http://www.swmaritime.org.uk/article.php?articleid=100&atype=l
and
http://www.swmaritime.org.uk/article.php?articleid=104&atype=l
$795 !!!!
http://shop.showcaseantiques.com/product_info.php/cPath/94/products_id/4888
Nailsea white-speckeled
http://www.moorabool.com/stockpics/1007625/1007625.html
Open-end w Tin Lid (modern ?)
http://pages.tias.com/cgi-bin/item.fcgi?itemKey=1922635266&store=%2Fstores%2Ffoundtr&catId=Kitchen_Collectibles
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http://www.broseley.org.uk/miscfiles/GlassHist.pdf
This type of glass was also produced at wrockwardine.
Ian 8)
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i can remember my G grandad telling the story as he had 3 hanging on the wall when i was a small child, the story around them was .... , really it was for smuggling spice's and tea that's why most of them are very dark blue/green glass, in the middle of the 1800's spices from the far east had the same value as gold in England and the same for tea, then it could be sold on the black market, it's just like smuggling drugs today and if they got caught who knows what would happen to them
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Ray, that's delightful. Thanks for your memories.
Bernard C. 8)
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Bernard - Tut tut, you must mean the High Level Bridge on Tyneside. The Tyne Bridge is the Sydney Harbour type one. I'd love to see a train going over the latter!
Adam D.
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Bernard - Tut tut, you must mean the High Level Bridge on Tyneside. The Tyne Bridge is the Sydney Harbour type one. I'd love to see a train going over the latter!
It's a fair cop, Adam — guilty as charged.
Am I correct in thinking that the four bridges are the High Level Bridge, the Tyne Bridge, the Millenium Bridge, and, at the bottom, the Swing Bridge?
Also, have they arranged a regular test of the Millenium Bridge, so that you can be certain of watching it perform?
Bernard C. 8)
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Thanks for all the information folks.
Looking at some of the pictures of rolling pins it seems as though I may have had a Nailsea piece before. I hadn't realised the white thin walled glass pins with painted scences were Nailsea.
Oh and the theory about the contraband inside may be possible for some, particularlly the thin walled rolling pins. Mine is sealed at one end and has a hole the size of a pin head at the snapped pontil end, so you couldnt really get anything in it.
Thanks again
David
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David — Please be cautious about using the term "Nailsea". There was a glass house at Nailsea, near Bristol, but Hajdamach only uses the term in connection with trailed glass, thus:
Trailed decoration is often termed 'Nailsea' but was made by glasshouses in all parts of the country. ...
"Nailsea" was one of a range of terms used by old-style experts, particularly auctioneers, for "Don't know". Other terms in this category were "Mary Gregory" and "Stourbridge". The problem was that as experts, "Don't know" was then unacceptable. Now, of course, "Don't know" or a similar form of words is a frequently used part of any authority's vocabulary, and, conversely, one should be suspicious of anyone in this field who doesn't use it.
Hajdamach is quite interesting in this respect. He is positive about such terminology, but his references are rather difficult to find, the above being in a picture caption. The book is interesting as well for what he left out. His publishers obviously needed to sell the book in quantity to make a profit, so he took it quite gently, trying not to offend anyone.
I think future glass historians will come to view the book's publication in 1991 as the date when a new realism came into attributing British glass. This has been both helped and hindered by the Internet. Helped by making information and opinion more readily available and open to criticism, and hindered by the continued need for eBay and other sellers to use terms such as "Nailsea", as that is what many collectors search for.
On a lighter note, I actually saw the following attribution in a British auction catalogue some years ago — "Possibly European or American". What an elegant way of saying "Beat's me — I haven't a clue"!
Bernard C. 8)
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Bernard - Those are four OF the bridges. You also have King Edward (rail only), Scotswood, Redheugh (pronounced red-yoof) and the one carrying the Metro whose name if any I don't know.
Re the Millenium Bridge, it is very well worth watching work. There are notices posted on it giving the next time of opening. As there is very little big river traffic now, they seem to open it fairly regularly for the tourists. River trip boats pass under at the appropriate times! They may have a website giving times.
Adam D.
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Peter provided some interesting links earlier relating to the glass rolling pins and one of those included an extract from a book by Maciver Percival (and a jolly good book it was, too!). Percival stated, "They were mainly made at Bristol ...".
However, we should bear in mind that in the days of that book dealers, authors and collectors tended to attribute many "unknown" items to Bristol and this unfortunately still has its followers today - particularly in the USA where auctioneers and others attribute all sorts of things as "Bristol glass".
Both "Bristol" and "Nailsea" seem to have become ingrained generic terms that need to be taken with very large pinches of salt when stated as a specific attribution. Maybe certain items can be very reasonably linked to glasshouses in those places, and maybe some items had a loose connection to Bristol, having been shipped out of that port in times past. But much of the modern references to "Bristol" and "Nailsea" glass are just hangovers from the days when the names were convenient for, as Bernard pointed out, a lack of conviction in the "don't know" category.
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Peter — Thanks for the links, most interesting.
Adam — Thanks for the chapter and verse on Newcastle's bridges. I will do the research before our next visit to this great city, hopefully within the next two or three months.
Kevin — Thanks. I was starting to feel a trifle lonely!
Bernard C. 8)