Old Glass and How to Collect it by J. Sydney Lewis

Author:J. Sydney Lewis [Lewis, J. Sydney]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anboco
Published: 2016-09-05T22:00:00+00:00

FIG. 23.—COMMEMORATIVE GLASSES.

(From the Rees Price Collection, by permission of the Connoisseurs.)

one side, with the inscription, “The Ann and Bessie,” and on the reverse, “James Oddie, Bromley,” probably the name of the owner both of the craft and the goblet, who registered to posterity his pride in the one by means of the other. This glass, I am informed, was the property of the late A. P. Trapnel, Esq., a renowned collector of Bristol porcelain and, though to a less degree, of old glass.

The covered grog pot or jar in the centre of the group is artistically engraved with roses and festoons, with the inscription, “Success to the Britannia, Edmund Eccleston, 1774.”

For the illustrations of several of the above pieces I am indebted to the courtesy of the late Mr J. T. Herbert Bailey. Such examples, which cannot fail to interest the lover of art as well as the collector of antiques, amply testify to the strides which glass manufacture had made in England, and are also useful as indicating the nature of the finds a collector may even yet make in out-of-the-way places, provided he will first take the precaution to acquire such knowledge of the characteristics of old glass as will serve to protect him from being deceived by modern reproductions. One does not, for example, expect to find engraving or cutting on early importations from Venice, or that the glasses made in commemoration of various events invariably bear appropriate inscriptions, by which they may be immediately identified. Sometimes there is a date alone, sometimes a figure or merely initials, and the collector’s imagination and historical knowledge, as well as his expert acquaintance with the qualities of old glass, are all called into play to determine the date and occasion when the specimen was produced.

It need hardly be said that historical and commemorative glass are very widely imitated, the commonest and most plausible of the various forms of deception adopted being, as elsewhere suggested, to engrave some comparatively valueless specimen of real old glass with figures exactly imitating the genuine thing, and so giving it a fictitious value.

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