Vase

Whitefriars vase made in Blue Opal glass, with a cylindrical neck, wide shoulders, a rounded funnel body tapering to narrow base on a merese, and an optic moulded foot. The vase is decorated with copper wheel-engraved leaf bouquets and sections of 'flower cane'. Harry Powell noted in 1876 that Bibby, one of the glass-blowers, was using sections of flower canes on jugs. Bibby, who seems to have specialised in decorative techniques, left in the summer of 1877, after the introduction of the opal glasses, so this may have been made by him. A similar technique combining hot applied cane slices with 'cold' copper wheel engraving was used by Baccarat for tableware about the same period. This is the only evidence from the archive of the use of millefiori cane at Whitefriars in the 19th century: there is no evidence of millefiori paperweights being made at Whitefriars before the 1930s.