The Jobling Discovery

With thanks to John & Loretta Nielsen and Steven Bateman

In Carnival Glass, The Magic and the Mystery (2nd Edition), you can read the story of The Wear Flint Glass Works factory and the history its successive owners, Greener & Co. and James A. Jobling, as well as information from the Nielsens on the first Carnival Glass that we are aware of bearing a Greener trademark. The piece in question is a Leaf and Grape low bowl and it is in vivid purple with a beautiful iridescence.

Now we would like to build on the detailed information given in our book and show here (courtesy of Steven Bateman) another iridised item from Greener/Jobling.

Steven provided the above photos and explains that it is Jobling's 1054 pattern, and that “the base colour appears to be black amethyst, the iridescence is very fine and shows lovely gold and purple colours.” He gives the dimensions as:
Diameter 10 3/8 inches (26.4 cm)
Diameter of base 5 1/4 inches (13.3 cm)
Height approx. 1 inch (2.54 cm)

A Jobling ad in the British Pottery Gazette in 1935, below left courtesy of Sreven Bateman, appears to illustrate an iridised black amethyst 1054 bowl, with the by-line “The dainty charm of British coloured Glass”, Below right is an extract from the 1934 Jobling catalogue showing their 1054 and 1054½ range ("suite").

Steven’s discovery started us thinking! Somewhere tucked away in a box of glass we had a bowl that could be similar. We dug it out and were astonished to find that we did indeed have an example of Jobling’s 1054 pattern in iridized black amethyst. We had acquired the bowl some fifteen years or more ago, and we had no idea at the time who had made it so we packed it away. Thanks to Steven Bateman’s discovery and information we now have what is the second reported example of this fascinating piece.

The dimensions of our piece are: 

Diameter 8 inches (20.5 cm)
Diameter of base 5 ¾ inches (14.5 cm)
Height approx. 2 ¾ inches (7 cm)

More to follow…….