Registered Designs: Glass in the mid to late 19th century

I have just finished my internship at The National Archives in Kew, Surrey and so I have completed all of my tasks. It’s really sad leaving such an amazing place that fulfills a historian and researcher’s heart and creativity.

While working there, I catalogued a volume for the Registered Designs Office which spanned from 1842-1884 and dealt with Class 3 objects, all glass. I didn’t really like glass before I began, but now I feel a bit obsessed with finding pieces still surviving today that correspond to the designs submitted personally by the designers.

What I specifically did was transcribe the registration volume. The registration volume consists of hand written information: number of registration, number of parcels submitted, name, address, description of object, and date. My volume had 4 corresponding representations volumes. The representation volume had the original design, or photograph, of the object submitted for the registration and was pasted into the volume and stamped with its number. Not only was I working with a Victorian clerical book, but I was also working with the designers themselves, essentially, because these designs and photographs are all originals, sent from the firms between 1842-1884.

I have collections from Sir Henry Cole, the first director of the South Kensington Museum (later renamed the V&A); F. & C. Osler, who designed the 27 foot tall fountain as the centrepiece of the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London; Eugene Rimmel, who started Rimmel Cosmetics in 1832; and many many more!

Another volunteer in my office even had a submission from Charles Dickens towards the end of his life, submitting a new design cover for his journal ‘All the Year Round’. I was able to touch the cover and become one degree away from Charles Dickens….eeeeeeeeee!!!!

The V&A holds most of the glass that was submitted to my volume and I was tickled pink to be able to go there last week and see so many of the pieces I’ve worked with personally. As much as you can feel close to an inanimate object, I felt like I personally knew the pieces.

While conducting a lot of research about the different glassmaking firms from the mid 18th to early 20th century in Britain I became enthralled with learning all about the Crystal Palace that held the Great Exhibition of 1851 in Hyde Park. The glass was handmade by one of the firms I had in my volume and the sheer architecture of the building is immense. I think I might pull this interest out for later purposes, a paper, a thesis….hmmmm….something to think about.

Well, all and all, I will miss the next 4 months of not being at TNA. I can’t wait to get back in September and work on some new cataloguing projects, and might even have the chance to lead some projects!

If you’d like to see some of the highlights I’ve worked with through my glass volume, please check out my wiki page on the TNA Your Archives site: http://yourarchives.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php?title=Registered_Designs_Glass 

It’s fun and I guarantee you’ll like glass a little more. If you ever need a tour guide for the V&A please contact me, I’d be happy to show you around, specially the glass collections!

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~ by Emily Kathryn Salcedo on April 24, 2009.