Topic: Posy ring with prunts and RD number

[Bernard C]

John — memory playing tricks on me.   At the time I said:

All four glass items were hand made, blown using the same shape mould, attached to the pontil rod, then the top hand-worked to the individual shape required.

If you zoom out on the little registration number image, you will see that the inside bottom corners are almost perfect 3-D right angles, indicative of a very high standard of production.   Like you, I can't see how they could have been pressed unless they were made like Chippendale bottles in two pieces and joined.   But there's no trace of that.   So I was probably right at the time.

Thanks for correcting me.

BTW some of the early Manchester cruet bottles were pressed, like the one illustrated on p.50 of Thompson.   What came out of the press was a tall vase shape, about twice the height of the height of the shoulders.   The neck and rim was hot worked from this extra glass.

Bernard C.  

[glassobsessed]

made like Chippendale bottles in two pieces and joined

That sounds like Incalmo.

The more I learn, the less I realise I know....

John

[Anne]

Anne — Oh no it isn't.   Thompson includes all the class 3 registrations they found from 1842 to the end of February 1908, except that, for reasons of space, she edited out designs from 1884 onwards "not likely to be encountered in the study of household glass".   My experience is that most of the missing registrations seem to be bottles.   Surprisingly all the pavement light and insulator registrations we've found in that 1884–1908 period are in Thompson.

Bernard C. 

Bernard, I was referring to the fact that the Thompson book was about pressed glass, and therefore in a shorthand way indicating that it may not necessarily cover Paul's piece.

And aren't pavement lights and insulators made from pressed glass anyhow? If not, how please, as I'd assumed (I know, never assume!) that they would be. Apologies to Paul for slightly hijacking his topic.

[Bernard C]

Anne — No No No.   Thompson suffers from the most misleading title of any glass book worldwide.   It's nothing to do with pressed glass.   It is fundamentally to do with registered designs, not the same thing at all.   What Thompson then did in the book and the supplement was to produce detailed editorial on glassworks with significant numbers of registered designs.   As the majority of registered designs were for pressed glass, most of her editorial discusses pressed glass and the big Manchester and northeastern glassworks producing it.   However the work includes factory summaries on Walsh, Richardson, Pargeter, Stuart, Boulton & Mills, and Thomas Webb, all with either very few pressed glass registrations or none at all.

Jenny Thompson did not use method of manufacture as her criterion for editing the 1884–1908 list, solely designs "not likely to be encountered in the study of household glass".   Hence my surprise at pavement lights and insulators being retained.   I think she kept any registration that looked interesting or unusual.

Bernard C.     

[glassobsessed]

It is conceivable that pavement lights could be cast but I think much better optical properties would be achieved by pressing. The (deck) lights I have here certainly look pressed to me, no sign of subsequent grinding and polishing which I think would be desirable if they had been cast.

Some photos of them and some pavement lights here: http://www.glassmessages.com/index.php/topic,30721.0.html

John