This radiant little vase was sitting on a shelf in the Nichols Building Vintage Arts and Crafts Centre in Sheffield earlier this week. It is perhaps older than it looks, dating to the early 1930's, and is hand thrown, white stoneware, in a shape designed by John Adams, with an inscribed shape number 806. But what drew me to it, like The Dear Leader to WMD, was the thick, lustrous, orange uranium glaze. which was also developed by John Adams, about the same time that Marie Curie was conducting her more fundamental experiments with similar stuff. I wonder how many Becquerels its emitting.
A friend of mine collects that strange green uranium glass, she borrowed a geiger counter from work and has moved her collection to the spare room.....I will not be staying there overnight!
Lol, maybe it will be safe in a million years or so. On the up side, I think the type of radiation that these things emit is able to travel a certain distance through the air, but it can't get through even a thin barrier like a sheet if paper, or through skin. So it may not be as dangerous as I've made out. But looking again at the video there I'm not so sure.
A friend of mine collects that strange green uranium glass, she borrowed a geiger counter from work and has moved her collection to the spare room.....I will not be staying there overnight!
ReplyDeleteLol, maybe it will be safe in a million years or so.
DeleteOn the up side, I think the type of radiation that these things emit is able to travel a certain distance through the air, but it can't get through even a thin barrier like a sheet if paper, or through skin. So it may not be as dangerous as I've made out. But looking again at the video there I'm not so sure.