Topic: Early Part set uranium Sowerby Butterfly 2552, broken leaf mould.

[Baked_Beans]

I was lucky to find this today. It's an early Sowerby Butterfly 2552 part set. It has two candlesticks one with the broken leaf design (very early...the left one in the photo) the other without...slightly later (perhaps) from a  different mould. The only piece without chips is the broken leaf candlestick....so I feel quite lucky     Needs a bit of a clean though      See this superb piece of research......

http://www.sherriff-family.com/butterfly.htm

Thanks for having a look, Cheers, Mike

[Anne]

It's certainly an interesting read, Mike. It's also worth adding that David C Watts, author of the book on London Glasshouses, said some while ago when we were discussing moulds, that the norm for many glassworks was to have four moulds for each piece being made. That way the production would be continuous. He also mentioned slight variations between moulds, e.g. that 1 or 2 may carry a registered design number whilst the others of the same piece do not.  There is, I am sure, still much we do not know about moulds, but my suspicion is that the variations noted in the article may be simply slight differences depending on the mould maker's interpretation of the pattern or when a damaged mould is replaced with a new one.  I could, of course, be totally wrong, so please don't take this as gospel, it's just how I am interpreting what I am seeing.

[Baked_Beans]

Thanks very much Anne for the information , very interesting.

This broken leaf one certainly looks well defined in terms of the 'crispness' of the casting, more so than the other. But as they both come from the same set (I would imagine)..... they may well have all been bought, originally, at the same time (I guess).

Cheers, Mike