Topic: Pedestal Badge Paperweight - Belgian / Paul Ysart / Other

[Greg.]

Hi All,

Appreciate these weights are a contentious area surrounded with much uncertainty, however, thought I would ask anyway 

I was wondering if it was possible to pin this pedestal Badge paperweight down and wondered if it may have been made by Paul Ysart or if it was more likely to have been produced on the continent, possibly Belgium.

The weight has a Middlesex Regiment Cap Badge to the centre on a spattered ground. I gather the Middlesex Regiment was amalgamated with three other regiments to form The Queen's Regiment in 1966.

The weight has a snapped pontil mark to the reverse and also a mark to the top where it looks to have been attached to an iron during production. The weight also gives a green glow under a standard UV light, please see attached photo.

Measures 4.8 Inches tall and 3.2 inches in diameter and weighs 534 grams.

All thoughts much appreciated.
Greg

[Greg.]

A couple of final pictures...

[KevinH]

Always some uncertainty with these. However, the overall appearance and colours of the background chips are quite similar to an example I have (see below).

Mine was purchased from the former dealers Anne & Peter Metcalfe, who had some contact with Ysart family members. Whether mine came through the Ysart family contacts I do not know. But generally, all of the badge weights I had seen via Anne & Peter were quite similar in their appearance. However, I had noted two styles of coloured chips - what I call "spaced lumpy" and "close nodules".

My pedestal example was shown in the 2013 PCC Ysart Exhibition (and catalogue). As yet, nobody has offered me an alternative attribution.

[tropdevin]

***

Hi Kev / Greg. The various Belgian factories made lots of pedestal paperweights, and lots of army badge weights, so I suspect this is Belgian.  That said, Paul certainly made some badge weights, and some in pedestal form - I think that he and Salvador saw this style of paperweight when they were in Paris, around 1913 (along with harlequins, fountains, and sulphides) and reproduced the styles later.  The Sweetbriar link is probably irrelevant: Anne was not a paperweight expert, especially in the early days: she used to consult John Deacons and others about attributions.

Alan

[Greg.]

Thanks both for your thoughts and also the picture Kevin. Appreciate this is an area with few certainties. 

[mjr]

Just to add my thoughts, as I have a few of these now.  I tend to group them into two distinct styles.  Weights that have the widely spaced and quite pastel coloured spatter ground, and those that have a more compact and more vivid ground. These do loosely match up to two profiles.  The former tend to be flatter, with more rounded edge to the base, the latter a more regular profile and sharper base edge and these latter ones bear more of a similarity of shape with other Ysart weights.   On this unscientific basis I class the first style as Belgian and the second as Ysart.

[chopin-liszt]

 
I suspect the green glow under UV is from Manganese. It's much more diffuse than. and not as bright as Uranium.

[KevinH]

Martin's comments above are interesting. My pedestal example would fit into Martin's first category in terms of spatter and profile + base edge.

I also have a regular example (i.e. no pedestal) which has smaller, closer set and "more vivid" spatter pieces which would fit Martin's second category as it certainly has a "sharper" (or less rounded) bottom edge.

But within my regular (i.e. non-badge) PY weights, the profiles and base edge shapes vary quite considerably and I could make a case for either of my two badge weights to be, or to not be, by Paul Ysart.

I have not made any detailed full study of profiles and base edge forms of my PY items but it might be an interesting exercise.