Topic: Pressed Glass Cucumber Bowl - Kastrup/Fyens... But Who Else...?

[Pinkspoons]

These bowls pop up in large numbers in the UK - I got my two from a charity shop for 50p the pair. They're in the Kastrup and Fyens catalogues for 1910 (patterns 842 and 170, respectively) but because they do exist in such vast numbers I'm wondering if anyone else was making them?

Bowls

[Mosquito]

Bagley certainly made this shape, I seem to recall that Davidson also produced a version. I don't know if there are any noticeable differences between them.

[Pinkspoons]

Thanks for the input, Steven.

My pair are H=35mm, L=235mm, W=95mm. According to the sizes given in Dansk Glas: 1825 - 1925, these are the same proportions, give or take a mm or two, as the Kastrup/Fyens models.

Don't know if anyone has any definitively attributable to British glassworks that are this size also? It's hard to judge where mine came from as I've only really paid attention to them locally - and there's quite a bit of Danish design c.1900-1950 in the Lincolnshire area because of the links to Denmark through the fishing industry.

[Adam]

Sowerby 9" and 12" cucumbers 2153, flint, amber, blue, green very similar indeed.

Adam D.

[Pinkspoons]

Thanks for the details. Do you know during which years Sowerby produced them?

Thanks again.

[Adam]

Certainly during the 1950s when I was there.  Sowerbys' pattern numbers run chronologically and this one, I think, dates back to the 1920s or earlier.  Others on the GMB (Bernard?) could date its first appearance.  We made many thousands.  I don't know what, if any, gaps there might have been in production.  I think the 9" version might have been known in some quarters as 2153 1/2.

Adam D.

[Pinkspoons]

Ah, so the Kastrup/Fyens model might pre-date the Sowerby. That's surprising as c.1910, Kastrup/Fyens weren't really coming up with their own designs and were usually just copying European and Bohemian glass, as was Holmegaard. It would be odd for it to be the other way around.

I know that Holmegaard, certainly, was buying in pressed glass moulds from Brockwitz around this time - but I've no idea where Kastrup and Fyens were getting theirs from.

[Lustrousstone]

The same place as Sowerby and Davidson along with the Shell moulds?    The Davidson ones started production fairly early as they can be found in pearline. Did Kastrup do scallop shells as well? When we had a big discussion about the shell moulds, the thought of an enterprising mould salesman was raised

[Pinkspoons]

I've looked through, but can't find anything similar.

Saying that, my records are FAR from complete.

[Pinkspoons]

Found a small note in a history of Kastrup & Holmegaard that illuminates it a little...

"Throughout the first 100 years in the history of Danish glass there were no artists or designers attached to the glassworks. They produced the traditional glassware of unknown origin. In some cases they were 'pinched' from foreign catalogues, in other cases the glassmakers and glasshouse foremen had brought the moulds with them from one place to another and therefore the same things were made all over Europe. There was no such thing as artistic rights."