Topic: Identification help - Large Opaline Vase, Gilded Decoration

[goizil1]

Is anyone able to help identify this large (11.5" high) opalescent vase with oriental style "Golden Pheasant" gilded decoration?

The gilding looks to be gold rather than gold paste, is tooled and is contrasted with some kind of dark enamel.  It resembles some late 19th Century Baccarat or Thomas Webb vases.  The base has a large concave ground/polished pontil.  It looks as though the decoration has been let into the glass in some way, or the white glass cut away and polished, leaving the decoration almost flat to the surface of the piece. 

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

[flying free]

Welcome to the board

Can we see a clear close up photograph of the base (showing large pontil mark) and the decoration(showing detail of the gilding and colour enamel ) please?  If you take pictures against a plain white card background it enables those features to show up clearly.

Also  you might ask the mods (by clicking on the report to moderator button on the bottom left of your post) to amend your heading title as I think the vase would be described as opaline, not opalescent glass?  It helps in future searches
thanks
m

[KevinH]

Thread title has been tweaked.

[flying free]

Thank you

[goizil1]

Details of the design and base as requested.

Thanks for any help you can give.

[flying free]

Thanks - great pics

It looks as thought the design has been engraved into the glass somehow (I don't know much about these things - for example could it have been hand done? or done with a stencil of the design of some sort ? Hopefully someone who knows more about these things might be able to help), then gilded over with gold (and silver possibly?  could it be silver that has tarnished ... it does that and then appears grey or black).

The polished pontil mark and gilded fire polished rim to the vase make me think English or French as you have said.
I'm wondering slightly about Stevens and Willliams -  but only because of an extremely tenous link in my head - I have a small 'alabaster range' S&W cocktail glass that is very bizarre in that it has an engraved grouse (and another dead grouse) on it  and then has been gilded.  The engraving on mine though is quite umm, sort of cartoonish in a way.  It's not a cartoon depiction, but I think because it is quite simple and such a strange topic it appears that way. (It's a really very weird piece and I've never been able to work out exactly who or what it was made for - never seen another).
  As I say, a very tenuous link, however the shape, the opaline and the large polished pontil mark could also come from S&W, which is why I mentioned it. 

Have you searched the Black Country museums website for a shape match?  I don't recall anything in the engraved style of decoration being on there though as I would remember it because of my glass.


~Sorry I can't be more helpful.
m

[goizil1]

Thanks Flying Free.  You are probably right about the silver.  The design does look etched or incised in some way, and then the gilding/silvering applied. Intriguing!
Regards.

[flying free]

this is my cocktail or cordial glass
it's the only pic I have at the mo but does show that weird engraved design

[goizil1]

Thanks F F.  I see what you mean, the incised design on your glass looks to have been done in a similar way, almost like a stamp has been pressed into the hot glass after shaping.

[Lustrousstone]

The design will have been needle or plate etched on cold glass.