Some glittering surprises
IT’S NOT just owning antiques that’s fun. It’s the enjoyment of hunting for new acquisitions, specially in a new saleroom or location, to say nothing of the excitement of finding something special.
Adding immensely to the experience are the fellow collectors you meet, some encounters adding rich memories to the journey.
Like the chap we met who claimed he was “a world expert on Victorian fairings” – crudely-potted hard paste porcelain knickknacks that were either prizes or penny purchases at country fairs.
He reckoned he’d once discovered a fairing so rare, he had been able to sell it for enough money to buy two firstclass plane tickets to New York.
We came across him later that day at a church jumble sale, his wife’s arms laden with secondhand clothes. Clearly similar rarities had evaded him.
Then there was the lovely retired couple we chatted to over coffee. He was a collector of “Jack in the pulpit” glass and had cabinets full of the things, to the point where his wife had insisted some had to go.
He’d kept the best, though, and in the pause in the conversation, it was obvious he was waiting for us to ask what a Jack in the pulpit glass was. His disappointment when we didn’t was palpable, but we refrained from boasting about a couple of our own, one of which is particularly lovely.
What we hadn’t given much thought to was where the name came from, although once you know, it’s obvious, specially if you’re a gardener.
Jack in the Pulpit, or Ariscema triphyllum, is a North America plant used by the native population as a food source and a medicine to treat sore skin. However, in its raw form, it is highly poisonous.
The plant flowers perennially, the old fashioned “pulpit” being formed by a leafy hood beneath which is
“Jack”, the spiky, erect flower’s reproductive part. At first glance, it looks like a Sundaymorning preacher ready to give his sermon to anyone passing by.
Given its American roots (sorry!) it’s perhaps not surprising that one of its admirers was arguably that country’s greatest
Right: Rare Steuben Aurene vase covered in a golden iridescence, sold for £750. Aurene was developed by Frederick Carder at Steuben, the iridescent surface made by spraying the glass with stannous chloride or lead chloride prior to reheating.
THE spring Art & Antiques for Everyone fair at the NEC planned for April 2-5 has been cancelled owing to the coronavirus outbreak. The organisers reached the decision following advice from Public Health England and consultation with exhibitors and insurers. The next event on July 16-19 remains in the calendar. glassmaker, Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933) who first saw it on his Long Island, New York, estate.
As a result, many credit him with being the first to use its name to describe a particular style of glass vase modelled after the plant’s shape.
I’m not so sure, though.
His vases appeared in around 1900, but English glassmakers
Stevens & Williams were making similar products half a century earlier. Since then, a myriad of other makers followed and Jack in the Pulpit glassware continues to flow from today’s producers.
With their slender, sometimes curling stems and coquettish twist to the tip of the “pulpit”, the shape screams Art Nouveau, a decorative arts design period from about 1890-1910 that took its inspiration from nature.
Louis Comfort Tiffany (18481933) was the son of Charles Lewis Tiffany, the New York fancy goods retailer and one of America’s most influential Art Nouveau artist-craftsmen.
Louis trained as a painter but turned to the decorative arts in 1879, establishing a firm of interior decorators in the city. However, his international fame was secured as a glassmaker and designer, producing everything from stained glass windows to breathtakingly beautiful lampshades.
His vases were made form iridescent glass, produced with a technique he patented in
1894 called favrile, a name
Christopher’s Loetz vase erroneously
engraved as “Tiffany”, priced
at £285 derived from fabrile, meaning handmade or belonging to a craftsman.
Several glass firms made iridescent glass in the early 1900s, but Tiffany’s soft, incandescent sheen of lustrous favrile glass, inspired by colours found on excavated antique Syrian and Roman glass, was unique.
Tiffany’s Jack in the pulpit vases were made in different sizes and colour combinations, achieved by dissolving salts of rare metals in molten glass and keeping them in an oxidised state in the kiln to produce chemical reactions.
Some were also sprayed with chloride, which made the surface break up into fine lines that picked up the light. Gold lustre is said to have been made from gold coins dissolved in hydrofluoric acid.
Needless to say, such glassware is out of reach for all but the wealthiest collectors, but we found a golden iridescent “Tiffany” Jack in the Pulpit vase decorated with at an upmarket antiques fair last month for £285.
The dealer was quick to point out that the base had been engraved with the Tiffany name by some devious chancer. In fact, the vase was made in the Loetz glassworks, founded in 1836 in the Southern Bohemian town of Klostermühle, today part of the Czech Republic. Hence the price.
Jack in the Pulpit-style glassware has been made in both opaque and in colours such as cranberry, milk, peachblow, and “Vaseline” yellow, more correctly termed uranium glass and the list of makers who produced and still produce it is lengthy.
But what of Stevens & Williams? Established in Stourbridge in the West Midlands in 1776, the glassworks at Moor Lane, Brierly Hill passed from Richard Honeybourne to Joseph
Silver in 1824 and then to William Stevens and Samuel Williams, who each married Silver’s daughters.
Stevens & Williams was founded in 1847 and became noted in particular for producing quality decorative glass, using techniques such as freehand engraving, acid etching, enamelling, and cameo cutting from about 1880 under the direction of John Northwood and his protégé Frederick Carder.
The firm patented “Damascened” glass in 1885, which featured silver or copper design surfaces; “Jewelled” and “Pearl
Satin” glass, the latter looking like mother of pearl, and, in 1888. “Moss-Agate” glass, which gave the effect of crazed semi-transparent alabaster.
Interestingly, Carder made his name in America where he co-founded the famed Steuben glassworks in Corning, New York.
Stevens & Williams became Royal Brierley Crystal in 1931 following a visit by the Duke and Duchess of York and is now owned by Dartington Ltd.