IMPROVEMENTS IN PRODUCING ORNAMENTS, DESIGNS, AND INSCRIPTIONS ON OR IN GLASS
Year: 1879

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Henry Gething Richardson at the
Office of the Commissioners of Patents on the 16th December 1879.
HENRY GETHING RICHARDSON, of the Firm of Hodgetts, Richardson, and Son, of
Wordsley, in the County of Stafford, Glass Manufacturers. "IMPROVEMENTS IN
PRODUCING ORNAMENTS, DESIGNS, AND INSCRIPTIONS ON OR IN GLASS."
My Invention consists of the improved process or combination of processes
hereinafter described whereby ornaments, designs, and inscriptions are produced
chiefly in vitrifiable or enamel colours on articles of glass, the said ornaments,
designs, or inscriptions being covered with a film or layer of flint or transparent
glass, or coloured, or semi-opaque glass.
I will describe my Invention as applied to the production of an ornamental
design on a vase or vessel of opal or other glass.
I form in the usual way a thin vessel of flint glass having a wide open mouth.
The design is painted or otherwise produced in enamel colours on the inside of the
said thin vessel. After the colours of the design have set or hardened, I heat the
said thin vessel to low redness, and introduce into it a smaller vessel of opal or
other glass, the said smaller vessel being supported on the blowing iron of the
workman, and so hot as to be plastic. By blowing, the workman expands the
smaller opal or other glass vessel and causes it to fill and to attach itself to the thin
vessel on which the design has been executed. The two vessels are thus combined
into one, the enamel design being enclosed between the two parts. By heating
and operating upon the vessel thus produced, in the way ordinarily practised by
the glass blower, the vessel may be brought into the required form and finished by
any additions that may be required. I prefer to make the thin vessel in the inside
of which the design is painted or executed as near the shape of the article to be
made as is convenient, as any change in the shape of the said thin vessel produces
a distortion in the design. This distortion can be provided against by modifying
the design executed in the thin vessel, the parts of the design which in fashioning
the article will be expanded being made proportionally less, and those parts of the
design which will be contracted being made proportionally larger.
Instead of painting or executing the design on the inside of a thin vessel, it may
be painted or executed on the outside of a mass or vessel of glass, which is after-
wards heated and attached to a glass blowing iron or blowing tube and heated and
flint or transparent glass gathered upon it. The design in enamel colours is thus

page_text: enclosed between the glass on which it was executed and that which has been
gathered upon it. This mass or vessel of glass is by blowing and the usual
manipulations fashioned into the required form. I prefer however the first
described method of carrying my Invention into effect.
The materials I employ for producing the ornamental design are the ordinary
vitrifiable enamel colours, gold, silver, and such other materials as are or may be
used for producing ornamental designs on glass. The pigments or materials may
be applied by a brush, or may be applied by the ordinary transfer process, or by
stencilling or otherwise.
I prefer to make the interior of the vessel or article of opal or opaque or semi-
opaque glass, so that the ornament is displayed on a white or opalescent ground,
but flint glass only may be employed, in which case the ornament has the
appearance of being painted on transparent glass.