A Silver Alternative

 

QUESTION: As I was browsing a weekly flea market, I came upon a curious silver vase—at least I thought it was silver. But when I picked it up, it felt like glass and was much lighter than silver. The dealer said it was Mercury glass. I never heard of such a thing. Can you tell me more about it?

ANSWER: As the Industrial Revolution gained momentum, the growing middle class wanted inexpensive alternatives to the silver objects owned by the wealthy. One of those alternatives was Mercury glass, first made as an inexpensive silver substitute. Soon it evolved into an art form of its own.

First produced in the late 18th century, Mercury glass was a handblown, double-walled glass with an interior coating of silver-colored metal compounds. It took many forms, including candlesticks, compotes, candy dishes, plates, goblets, wig stands, curtain tiebacks, and doorknobs. Some critics condemned it for looking too much like mirrored glass and too little like silver, which was what people liked about it.

Produced originally from around 1840 until around 1930 in Bohemia, now the Czech Republic, and Germany, it spread to England in 1849 when Edward Varnish and Frederick Hale Thomson patented the technique for silvering glass vessels, and continued to be made there until 1855.

Mercury glass, also known as silvered glass, contains neither mercury nor silver. It's actually clear glass, mold-blown into double-walled shapes and coated on the inside with a silvering solution containing silver nitrate and grape sugar, heated, then closed. Sealing methods included metal discs covered with a glass round in England, or a cork inserted into the unpolished pontil scar on the bottom in America. In the beginning a few Bohemian makers tried to line their pieces with a mercury solution, but they stopped using it due to expense and toxicity. However, this is where the name originated.

Companies in the United States, including the Boston and Sandwich Glass Company, New England Glass Company Union Glass Company, and the Boston Silver Glass Company, made silvered glass from about 1852 to 1880. The New England Glass Company displayed a variety of silvered glass articles, including copper wheel engraved goblets, vases and other tableware at the 1853 New Crystal Palace Exhibition.

Bohemian Mercury glassmakers decorated their pieces with a variety of techniques including painting, enameling, etching, and surface engraving. Antique historians believe it to be the first true "art glass"---glass made for display and for its artistic value rather than for everyday use.

The peak of Mercury glass’ popularity came in the mid-19th century. Back then, high-quality European and American-made pieces were lightweight, had graceful forms, and came decorated with acid-etched fruit or floral motifs, cut glass designs, and sometimes paint. Young girls, working on assembly lines, painted vases in particular with their own designs of swans, daisies, or leaves. Makers intended the details on their pieces to be equal to the finest decoration on other forms of glass and china.

After briefly falling out of favor, Mercury glass reappeared around 1900 in the form of Christmas ornaments and gazing balls, as well as blown fruits and flowers. Today, most serious collectors concentrate on antique forms, like curtain pins, salt cellars, or pedestal-footed silvered vases.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "The Art Deco World" in the 2024 Spring Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

The Devil with a Hammer in His Hand

 

QUESTION: I’ve always been fascinated with decorative ironwork. Seeing it on my first trip to New Orleans got me hooked. Ever since, I’ve sought out decorative gates, window grills, and railings. Most of this ironwork is unsigned, thus the creators remain anonymous. Recently, I heard of a especially talented metalworker named Samuel Yellin. What can you tell me about this artful metalworker?

ANSWER: Few people think of hand-wrought iron as being an art form, but metalworker Samuel Yellin produced an incredible amount of forged ironwork he designed and executed along with talented craftsmen trained by him. His designs followed the concepts of the Arts and Crafts Movement in the first quarter of the 20th century. Although he was knowledgeable about traditional craftsmanship and design, he championed creativity and the development of new designs for both intimate or monumental scale, for private homes or large institutions. .

Born in Russia in Mohyliv-Podilskyi, Ukraine in the Russian Empire in 1884, he apprenticed to a master ironsmith at age 11.  In 1900, at the age of 16, he completed his apprenticeship. Shortly afterwards he left the Ukraine and traveled through Europe before emigrating to America in 1900. He headed to Philadelphia where his mother and two sisters were already living. Yellin took classes at the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art and within several months began teaching a class in wrought iron work, a position he maintained until 1919. 

He opened his first shop in 1909 with three assistants. Through recommendations by architects with whom he worked, Yellin built an appreciative clientele. He soon received the first of many major commissions, the palatial gates of J.P. Morgan's Long Island estate. To keep up with burgeoning business, the firm of Mellor & Meigs Architects, for whom Yellin had designed and created many commissions, designed a new studio for him on Arch Street in Philadelphia in 1915.

As a material, iron lacks intrinsic value and has little aesthetic appeal. The color is coarse, and it’s often used for the most utilitarian items.. Yellin's ironwork is endowed with a great deal of character and appeal based largely on the visual evidence of its having been crafted by hand. 

Yellin believed there was only one way to make good decorative metalwork and that was with the hammer at the anvil. He was adamant about working from traditional designs. He saw the poetry and rhythm in iron.

He also believed his ironworks should harmonize with their environment. Iron window grilles naturally restrict access and provide security, but Yellin insisted that ironwork must not be seen as a barrier. Ironwork should instead create a visual bridge between people and buildings, and to the space beyond it.

Yellin's gates, railings, lanterns, doors, grilles and numerous other creations not only adorned and decorated the buildings and rooms for which they were created, but also are among the finest in artistic achievement in ironwork.

His decorative ironwork is reminiscent of that in the Middle Ages. Yellin preferred to be called a blacksmith, not an artist or metalworker. He believed a metalworker needed to be both designer and smith, for every hammer stroke became an integral part of the design. His railings were tactile as well as visually appealing. He turned,, twisted, and pulled the iron, demonstrating the physical process involved in manipulating the challenging material. Tenons were important in Yellin's work. He used them to show how he joined the pieces together. These were part of the design, providing texture and dimension to the tops of the handrails or edges of the gates. 

Forging is the process of shaping metals by hammering or pressing them after making them pliant by the application of heat. Forging improves the structure of the metal by refining the grain size thus making it stronger, more ductile, and more resistant to fatigue and impact. Hand-forged iron reached its peak during the 13th and 14th centuries in Italy where ironworkers used it in many chapel screens and window and door grills. 

French and Spanish artisans were responsible for much of the early ironwork in New Orleans, while early ironwork in the northeast U.S. is due to English and American metalworkers: By the Industrial Revolution, cast ironwork replaced hand wrought iron.

From 1921 to 1924, Yellin worked on what was probably the largest commission of wrought iron work: 200 tons of wrought iron for the Federal Reserve Bank in New York City. This massive project required expansion of the shop to 60 forges and 250 workers.

At the firm's peak in 1928, Yellin employed 268 men. The studio received over 1,200 commissions in the 1930s alone. 

Although a heart attack in 1930 slowed his pace and he concentrated on experimental techniques. He died suddenly in 1940 at the age of 55. 

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "Coffee--The Brew of Life" in the 2023 Summer Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Calling Mr. Watson

QUESTION: I have one of those large black rotary telephones. Are those collectible now that we have such advanced technology?

ANSWER: You might want to consider holding on to your black phone for a while as they and many 20th-century models are coming into their own as collectibles.

“Mr. Watson, I need you.” When Alexander Graham Bell, the Scottish-born American inventor, scientist, and teacher of the deaf who’s most noted for his invention of the telephone in 1876,  spoke those now famous words to his colleague during the first telephone call on March 10, 1876, he had no idea where that would lead us. Today, many people have smart phones that do just about everything except make a cup of fresh coffee, although I suspect they’ll soon offer an “app” for that, although national brand coffee shops now have apps to order and pay for coffee right from a smartphone.

But what about all the phones that came before the smart ones. The long-time standard Western Electric 302 black rotary phone, introduced in 1937, is probably the most well known. Some people have game rooms in their homes in which they install a working pay phone. These workhorses, once owned by AT&T, were meant to last a long time.

When people think of old telephones, however, they usually imagine the Western Electric 102 candlestick-type phone, which went into use in 1927. Today, you can purchase an original for a modest $469 at the TelephonyMusuem online.

In the 1930s, Western Electric produced 202 model with an oval base, and later a sleeker handset, now selling for $289. Both the 102 and 202 models required a ringer, which customers had to buy separately. The large rotary 302 phone was the first to house the ringer in the phone. It was made from metal until World War II and sells for $199, then from plastic, selling for $169, until the late 1950s. Western Electric stamped the date of production on the base of its phones, so it’s easy to tell the age of the unit.

One of the big problems in collecting old phones is that many of the more unique ones have been reproduced, in working order, of course. While the originals sell for as much as $500, the reproductions sell for half that. Vintage phones from the 1920s can sell for as much as $2,000. So it’s important to watch for reproductions being sold as originals, especially on auction sites like eBay.

And don’t forget the sleek and colorful Princess phone, introduced in 1959, and the Trimline phone with dial in the handset, dating from 1965. Both replaced the stodgy desk phones of the past. Rotary dials continued to be offered even after touch-tone came out because phone companies charged an extra fee for touch-tone service and many customers didn't want to pay for it. The hotter the color of a Princess phone, the higher its price. The more common colors—pink, red, peach, and black—in touch or rotary sell for about $200 each while green, beige, white, aqua and yellow command prices of $150 and up.. The most common Princess phone in ivory sells for no more than $119. Most of the Princess phones require a $30 transformer to light the dial.

Collecting old phones isn’t difficult, but like clocks, you can have just so many in your house.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Article section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the other 18,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about western antiques in the special 2019 Spring Edition, "Down to the Sea in Ships," online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques & More Collection on Facebook.