Glass Message Board
Glass Identification - Post here for all ID requests => Glass Paperweights => Topic started by: louisa54 on July 07, 2015, 07:46:41 PM
-
We have inherited a small collection of paperweights from someone who lived near Birmingham. He kept scrupulous records of what he had bought, and in 1962 he describes a Stourhead dated paperweight for which he paid £75!! - far more than he had paid at the time for pieces of Georgian furniture etc. Surely excessive?
I am wondering which of these - if any - is the Stourhead one (perhaps he sold it). Some of them like the blue/turquoise and the red/white one look very crude and are very scratched.
As a family we are sharing the paperweights out - difficult to do when one might be much more valuable than the others.....
I would be so grateful for any information - beginning to see the appeal of collecting them now I have done some research. My favourite is the green one and the larger flat one to the right of it but those got bagged by someone else....
-
Sorry only managed to upload one picture before. Am trying again!
-
Hi.
I think you mean Stourbridge (which is where the Richardson factory was) rather than Stourhead. The first picture you uploaded, and the matched pair in the bottom image look like Richardson pieces, as does the bottom left one in image 1, but I have never seen a dated one. What you do get are dated Old English pieces from Arculus and Walsh Walsh (both of Birmingham). These sometimes carry a false '1848' date (they were made in the 1920s - 1930s). The right hand piece in your top image looks like an Arculus paperweight, and it may be that there is a crude '1848' set in canes - check the third row in from the edge at about 10 o'clock in your image (I cannot quite make out what it is). The millefiori inkwell looks at first sight like a Walsh Walsh piece, but some of the canes look more like Whitefriars: I suspect it is a Whitefriars piece from around 1950.
Alan
-
Thank you so much - that's fascinating. And you are absolutely right - there is a very crude 1848 where you said. I do hope that's not what he paid £75 for fifty years ago!
-
***
Hi Louisa. I suspect it may be what he paid £75 for, as 50 years ago dealers (and many collectors) would have believed that the date was genuine - some less well informed antique shops still do. It was only about 50 years ago that questions began to be raised in publications about the true date of these pieces.
Alan
-
The small blue ;D'matchstriker/ holder' next to your inkwell maybe Richardsons, maybe ::) ;D