Size: 5" high

Image ©2008 J Fifield

Ducks were originally created as an apprentice piece or a "frigger". They were usually created to hone the skills of the glass blower or were done in their spare time as experiments or for their own amusement.

Whitefriars first started making ducks available to the public in 1957, when they appeared in their catalogue of that year.

However the story actually began 3 years prior to this, in 1954, when a customer came to the factory looking for help. Ray Annenburg, who was Harry Dyer\'s Leading Boy at the time, takes up the story:

"This was in the early fifties... A Customer had a pair of Baccarat ducks and broke one and couldn\'t get a replacement. So he went to Whitefriars to try and get one made. Harry Dyer tried to make a copy but it wasn\'t successful because they were partly moulded - the Baccarat ones - so he couldn\'t quite get the shape right. They weren\'t bubbly, they were plain - it was a plain duck.

And then Geoffrey Baxter - this was in his early days - got the design of the duck and made one to his own design - the bubbly duck."

The above information is courtesy of Jill Wainman, check her Duck site http://hometown.aol.com/whitefriarsducks.

Patrick Hogan (Tuesday, 06 February 2007)