Stakeout: St Vincent de Paul Op Shop, Newport

This St Vinnies. located on Mason Street, Newport (right next to Newport train station) gets a bad rap. Largely from me. See, it’s in my hood, so I’ve been able to keep an eye on it over the years, and it always seems a little disappointing – the stock (especially the clothes) too sparse, the jewellery non-existent, the book section comprising fifty million volumes concerning microwave cookery and perhaps a Jeffrey Archer novel.

But then again,

Vintage Uranium Glass: Rad, Rare and Radioactive

While at the Ballarat Antiques Fair this past weekend, I did make one interesting discovery which I thought worth sharing: uranium glass.

I’m the first to admit that antique/vintage glass is not something I know a lot about, which is probably why I’d never heard of this stuff before. Essentially, it’s glass with a component of uranium oxide added (about 2%, though in heady Victorian times it was as high as 25%), which means that it vaguely glows green in daylight, glows wildly green/yellow under UV light and has a positive reading when tested for radioactivity (but not to dangerous levels).

Someone had set up a small cabinet in Ballarat displaying uranium glass- mostly vases and bowls, though there was a rad butter dish shaped like a nude woman reclining – backlit by UV. It’s mightily impressive, as the way the glass is carved means that some parts glow more brightly than others, giving the stuff an ethereal/creepy look. Kind of part ghost story, part neon sign, part delicate Victoriana. There’s something very cold war about it, even though it was originally produced in Victorian times in workshops such as that of the famous Josef Riedel (and became rare during the cold war due to the scarcity of uraium).

I also saw uranium glass jewellery (mostly beads), which is apparently safe to wear, but I don’t know. We all saw what happened to Marie Curie. Though apparently some peeps have vast, vast collections of uranium glass and are no worse off for it. Or so they say.