St. Amans in the Agen Museum Collection
by John Ford and Co.
Signed L.C. Wyon F.
St. Amans in the Agen Museum Collection
Apsley Pellatt was a Frenchman who held two patents on making glass and porcelain sulphides. The second one was held in 1831, and he called the process Crystallo-Ceramie. When moved around in the light, the porcelain cameos appear to be silver, which led some people to erroneously believe that the low or bas-relief sculptures, that were made by using shallow molds were actually made with metal instead of or along with the clay. The bottle pictured above was made by John Ford and Company. John Ford was appointed in 1937 as Flint Glass Manufacturer in ordinary to Queen Victoria.
Some people tried to mount coins in glass objects as well, but most often they tended to not become truly enclosed. Coins generally sat inside the glass very loosely, moving around, and even in some cases causing a rattle. This is quite unlike the porcelain bas-reliefs or cameos, which seem to have a similar temperature upon a change of state as the hot glass, or at least a similar chemical makeup. The hot glass is mostly silica, and the clay recipe for porcelain also includes silica. Some descriptions of the making of a sulphide also include the use of a glass paste with a porcelain cameo inside the hot glass bubble, adding in even more similarity in chemical makeup.
Not every glass object containing a snugly fitting ceramic cameo, was made with blown glass. Some were enclosed in pressed glass objects. Apsley Pellatt was a person who made pressed glass as well as the more valuable blown glass. These blown glass objects, which sometime after being blown were cut on their exteriors using grinding wheels, were also called crystal objects. The next video gives the basics of making pressed glass, and the following one shows how cut glass or crystal is made.
If you would like a little more information on sulphides, see the blog entry on the ‘Home’ page called ‘Combining Glass Making Skills With Ceramic Skills’, or look at the ‘Recent Posts’ in the box, which is up and to the right for the same title.