Friday 24 January 2020

Team

I found these girls on Ebay recently and engaged in a bit of a bidding war, but I just had to have them! I love the different colours, and various states of wholeness. They are celluloid which is made from cellulose and camphor from wood (amongst other things) It was first created in 1863 and became a popular material right up until the fifties. These dolls look quite 1930s to me, but I don't know.  It was replacing fragile doll materials, but is fragile itself, as it can be easily crushed, and also damaged by moisture and exposure to heat. (It is quite flammable)

Monday 13 January 2020

Stuff

Is it too late to say Happy New Year? If not, then Happy New Year!
Below are my finds from the place I mentioned in the last post. I took the photos ages ago, but then Christmas happened and it is now already! I went back to this part of the foreshore one last time just before Christmas, and was lucky again, finding a pipe with quite a long piece of stem left on it, and a tiny glass bottle. 
The whole group of good finds, from two separate visits. The piece of pipe stem is one of the longest pieces I have found, although without its bowl! There are two milk bottles, and the square bottle which I don't think is old and the glass jar. The white stoneware bottle came out of the mud whole. It is impressed with Doulton, Lambeth and is probably late 1800s.
 Beautiful pieces of pottery. The piece with the partial word on (Sugar I suppose) is my favourite, for the style of the lettering and how the glaze is raised on the letters and dots.
Bottle necks.
I can find nothing about Bumsted pottery, but like the impressed crest. The partial rim of a large stoneware pot made me wish the whole thing had been there! I like handles,, and necks of bottles, and I especially like the ceramic electrical pieces that I often find.
This was my first lucky find, a few weeks before Christmas. Just a tiny piece of the base was sticking out of the mud, and I was amazed when the whole thing emerged! It is a stoneware mustard pot from around 1870-1900, made by William Powell and Sons of Bristol. I love this quote from an 1857 advert to apply to work there:-'To stoneware throwers. Constant employment can be given to two good hands-Apply to William Powell & Sons, Temple Gate Pottery.' (Quote from here.)
A marmalade jar which looked perfect on one side, but was only pretending!
I think this is a spark plug. 
The top of a Codd bottle with the marble still inside. Lots of the marbles are found on the foreshore (not by me so far!) as children would smash the bottles to play with them. The Codd bottle was invented by Hiram Codd in 1872, and was designed to stop carbonated drinks from going flat.
I almost always find part of a mobile phone, and am hoping to construct a whole one some day. 
This find was very hard work to get out of the mud. Only an edge was sticking up, and at first I thought it might be part of a rusty old enamel bucket like I always find. But I could see colour and thought I would investigate. It was wedged vertically between a heavy rock and an even heavier piece of wood, with lots of stones holding it in place. It turned out to be partially bent under the piece of wood, so didn't come up easily! It is in a terrible state and bits of enamel are still flaking off it, but I was pleased with my Adkins Nutbrown tobacco advertising sign!