Searching through the plates and dishes stored in one of our sideboards last weekend, (I was actually looking for some suitable small bowls to put pickles in for a barbecue) I realised how much pressed glass I had accumulated. Plates, bowls, dishes, salts, sugars, comports and some commemorative dishes added to the vases in one of the kitchen cupboards and the candlesticks and dressing table sets in the bedrooms they make up quite a collection. Clear glass, pink, green, blue, yellow, carnival and so many different designs. Most of the collection I inherited from my Scottish Grandmother who had a habit of visiting a saleroom not far from her home in Tollcross, Edinburgh. She would bid on sealed boxes of china and glass not knowing what she had acquired until she got the box home and unpacked it. Pondering on the collection later, I realised how little I know about pressed or moulded glass. I know that the style was developed in the Victorian period when glassmaking changed from being a craft to being a factory-based process, but little else. Why had this change come about, who were the major producers and how could their wares be recognised?

Determined to find the answers to these questions and learn a little about my collection I was soon inundated with information both from library reference books and from numerous googled websites. So much Collectors' information available and so many avid Collectors worldwide.

From one of the many library books on the subject, the Country Life Antiques Handbook informed me that the process of press-moulding was developed commercially and patented by John P. Bakewell in America in 1825 and introduced into England in about 1830 when glassmaking changed from being a craft to being a factory-based process. Glass in the U.K. had been taxed by weight and this tax was repealed in 1845. It then became profitable to produce runs of identical moulded items, and for the first time every family could afford to own and use one or more pieces of decorated glassware. The procedure for moulding glass is to add molten glass to a plain or patterned mould and to press it into the mould with a plain or patterned plunger. The moulds were made of cast iron or brass, and later precision power-assisted tools became available to cut the patterns on the moulds. Most surviving pressed glass articles date from the end of the 19th century. Often a design remained in use for many years, not only because there was a demand for the particular item but because the mould had been so costly to make in the first place. The Patent Office Registry Marks (a diamond) on such pieces that bear them, indicate the date when the pattern was registered there, but do not give the actual date of manufacture. The diamond, on those items which are marked, can be found on the inside surface of the item. Instead of (and sometimes as well as) registration marks and diamonds, some firms marked their good with the company registration mark. The major pressed glass producers in Britain after the war were Davidson's, Sowerby, Jobling's, Bagley, Butterworth and Chance Bros.

So .................having found out why, who and how I now need to study each item to see if any have marks that will tell me where the item came from.