For an upcoming story, I need to situate it at a glassmaker, one that made a particular type of glass that fell out of favour in more modern times: uranium glass.
Uranium was first identified in the late 1700s but was soon used in glassmaking as it created a unique fluorescent colour. Many glassmakers began using it, and in England, one of the great creators of uranium glass was James Powell and Sons, also known as Whitefriar’s Glass. Interestingly enough, James Powell was from the same family as the founder of the Boy Scouts.
Uranium glass fell out of favour after World War II as sources of uranium (needed for bomb-making) dried up or became prohibitively expensive. The public became afraid of anything relating to radiation, even though uranium glass tableware was perfectly safe.
With my story set in the 1920s, I don’t need to worry about that, though physicists and fiction writers were already pondering the potential power of the atom and how it might be used, which is an association I want to exploit.
Whitefriar’s Glass was an existing company, established around 1680 and situated just off Fleet Street, though they relocated in 1923 to a factory in Wealdstone.
Interestingly, there is a ‘weald stone’ that was used to mark the boundary between parishes. It’s a sarsen stone, the same type used at Stonehenge, and its age, or at least how long it has been there, being unknown. A bit of a mystery in keeping with what I’m going for.
Powell and his sons took over Whitefriar’s Glass in 1834, six years before the elder Powell’s death. Weirdly, nobody involved had any experience with glassmaking. Still, they appeared to take to it quickly, to learn the necessary skills and – perhaps because of their lack of knowledge – to try new glassmaking methods and succeed with many of them.
James’ sons Arthur and Nathaniel made a name for themselves through the company in stained glass. They owned several technical-process patents, giving the company a strong reputation. They were amongst the first companies to offer glowing uranium glass due to their technical and innovative background.
Thanks to technological innovations and insights, they also produced a lot of architectural glass, becoming associated with Jackson, Burnes-Jones, de Morgan and Doyle and the arts and crafts movement around the same time.
The move to a new factory in the interwar period was intended to ramp up production and to allow the company to grow, but a planned village alongside the factor for workers to live in (taken from arts and crafts ideas) fell through as the factory was too expensive to build, in and of itself.
Even with that expense, the company continued to grow until after World War II, when it began a steep decline, finally winding up operations in 1980. Many examples of their work are either still found in situ or held in collections in various museums, though sadly, the factory was demolished and cleared.
Grim's Tales 