Victorian crystal table fountains

Elaborate table decorations of blown and cut glass were popular in the mid-eighteenth century in England but then seem to have fallen from favor, perhaps because of their fragility or perhaps because silver objects were more obviously luxurious and had more eye appeal. The trade cards of Maydwell and Windle, and Colebron Hancock, both English glass-cutting firms of the period, show objects that seem to combine the functions of a candleholder and a fountain, (1) but none of these are known to survive. About a century later, however, elaborate table centerpieces of glass and metal with holders for various combinations of flowers, sweetmeats, and goldfish emerged (see Fig. 4), paving the way for table fountains made of glass that became popular in the final third of the nineteenth century. These last were made by at least two English manufacturers and one American company, and a surprising number survive.

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Most of them utilize an "Improvement in Fountains" patented on June 7, 1870, (2) by Joseph Storer of Hammersmith, a London suburb, who declared that his invention would offer "improvements in that class of self-acting fountain known as 'Hero's fountain.' Specifically, it relates to the application of means whereby the repeated filling and emptying of the cisterns or reservoirs is obviated." Storer described the two cisterns and their connecting pipes and went on:

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To put the fountain in operation water is poured into the dish or basin
until the lower reservoir is filled and the opening is covered. The
cisterns are then turned on their axis of motion, so as to place the
filled one at the top and the water will flow to a level in the jet pipe
and be forced up to the nozzle from which it falls back into the basin
and drains down into the lower cistern. When the water has flowed
through, a reversal of the revolving cisterns will cause it to start
again. (3)

In his Pneumatica of about AD 62 Heron, or Hero, of Alexandria had described a water fountain that operated by air pressure, and drawings of it were illustrated in several nineteenth-century encyclopedias, among them Joseph Frick's Physical Technics (Philadelphia, 1861), Knight's American Mechanical Dictionary (Boston, 1884) by Edward Henry Knight, and Johnson's New Universal Cyclopedia of Universal Knowledge (New York, 1876-1878). Hero's fountain was a common piece of laboratory apparatus in the nineteenth century, although Knight's American Mechanical Dictionary also notes that Hero had "anticipated by 2,000 years some of the modern parlor fountains, in which a body of compressed air above the water in the reservoir below is made the means of driving a jet of water into the air." (4) Storer's innovation was to make the bulbs revolve, which meant that the fountain would play continuously without refilling. No mention is made in his patent application of the material from which the "reservoirs or cisterns" were to be made, but all except one of the known examples of Storer's fountain have decorative glass bulbs and basins. The year after he patented his fountain in England, Storer patented it in the United States, in 1871 (see Fig. 2). The text and the illustrations of the American patent are identical to those of the English one.

There is no evidence that Storer actually manufactured any fountains utilizing his device, but he licensed at least one English glass company to do so. Recently, a ruby-glass fountain marked "J. DEFRIES & SONS/MANUFACTURERS/OF STORERS PATENT/PERPETUAL FOUNTAIN/, 147 HOUNDSDITCH/LONDON" turned up at an auction in New Hampshire (Fig. 3). (5) Jonas Defries and Sons was a large manufacturer of glass chandeliers in London in the second half of the nineteenth century. (6) The Art-Journal for 1872 contains a full-page article about Defries's "Perpetual Fountain" or "Portable Perfumer" with illustrations of three different versions, one relatively simple and the other two with elaborate cut decorations on the glass bulbs, the largest also containing hanging vases and candleholders (see Fig. 6). According to the text:

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The ingenious invention supplies a want that has been long felt. The
value of introducing perfumes at a dinner-table is very great; hitherto,
however, there has been no mode of doing so at once simple and sure....
By merely turning the vases a continual jet is obtained; when the one is
empty the other is full: the current is passed through the metal
pipes.... When not active it is a graceful decoration.... they are of
all prices-from the plain to the richly adorned. (7)

An undated brochure for the company (Fig. 5) lists for sale "Chandeliers, Candelabra Fountains & Mosques for India" on one side and illustrates "Storers Patent Perpetual Table Fountain (for Perfumed Waters) for Home India & the Colonies ... This Perpetual Table Fountain When Complete with Flowers Forms the Most Elegant Ornament for Tables, Ball & Supper Rooms & c." The brochure likely dates from the mid- or late 1870s, since a full-page Defries advertisement in the English trade journal Pottery Gazette and Glass Trade Review, of September 1, 1880, lists a variety of products, but no fountains of any kind, indicating that production had probably ceased by that time. Although surviving evidence suggests that Defries was the only English maker licensed by Storer in the 1870s, it is impossible to be certain that all unmarked English fountains (see Fig. 1) employing the patent were made by his firm. (8)