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Author Topic: Hollow canes  (Read 5610 times)

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Offline aa

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Hollow canes
« on: May 05, 2005, 11:25:04 AM »
Most paperweight canes are solid, but I have come across the expression "hollow canes" some years ago to describe, presumably, blown canes. Can anybody shed any light on this. In particular, in the eighties I was told that Bacarat used hollow canes and this made their weights more special.
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Offline RAY

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Hollow canes
« Reply #1 on: May 05, 2005, 01:04:54 PM »
it's something to do with putting canes into a hollow tube, reheating them and the glass blower suck's the air out, but i could be wrong
cheers Ray

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Offline KevinH

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Hollow canes
« Reply #2 on: May 05, 2005, 07:03:50 PM »
I've not heard about this myself, but I will ask around.
KevinH

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Offline Frank

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Hollow canes
« Reply #3 on: May 05, 2005, 08:32:52 PM »
I think it is just a clear glass centre to a cane. Which lots of paperweight makers used.

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Offline RAY

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Hollow canes
« Reply #4 on: May 06, 2005, 11:30:13 AM »
just found some info on hollows cane process here and its a good read

http://www.wheatonvillage.org/museumamericanglass/exhibitions/pastexhibits/1992thousandsofflowers
cheers Ray

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Offline aa

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Hollow canes
« Reply #5 on: May 06, 2005, 01:15:46 PM »
Thanks Ray. very interesting description and fully explains the term
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Offline KevinH

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Hollow canes
« Reply #6 on: May 07, 2005, 02:11:36 PM »
Hi folks,

Another ramble from me ...

I think there is a bit of confusion here, but it's all very interesting, nonetheless. I checked with other PCC members about "hollow canes" used in Baccarat paperweights (this was easier and quicker than just scouring my books etc.) and I received some good pointers.

In Larry Selman's The Art of The Paperweight (1988), on page 76, in a section discussing millefiori canes, he includes a reference:
Quote
Hollow or tubular: The centers of these canes were made of clear glass, giving them a hollow appearance. Often the clear glass was surrounded by a cogwheel.


An example of the type of cane is seen perhaps more often in modern  weights from St Louis rather than Baccarat. Here's one from the PCC 1999 Exhibition:
http://www.kevh.clara.net/exhib99/Modern/French/StLouis/ModStLouisBouleRouge19.htm
The white cog canes, flashed in orange (or is it salmon-pink?) clearly have the look of being hollow but in fact have solid clear glass at the centre.

As Frank suggested, many makers from many countries have used canes with a clear glass centre. But perhaps the modern French designs, such as the St Louis one shown, have been the only ones to utilise these canes as a primary part of design - at least, visually?

Ray's reference to the text in the "Wheatonvillage" site is useful in that it gives a description of a process of collapsing clear glass around millefiori canes. But this is not the same as making "hollow canes".

In fact, the wheatonvillage text is a selective summary from two brief sections of the Apsley Pellatt book. In the "Venetian Ball" section, the item was described as being
Quote
... a collection of waste pieces ... packed into a pocket of transparant Glass ... adhesively collapsed ...
This process resulted in a solid mass which (probably) looked like an unevenly shaped bead but perhaps somewhat larger than regular beads of the time. The other section of Pellatt's book, headed "Mille-Fiore", described a broadly similar process but using the "double wall" technique (a blown sphere with the glass collapsed in on itself to form a double-walled "U-shaped" section - not just a "U" shape layer as in a modern-day "overlay cup"). When the hollow section was filled, after removal from the blowing iron, with pieces of canes and twists, and collapsed further, it could then be shaped, as Pellatt stated,
Quote
... into a tazza, paperweight, &c., at pleasure.


Pellatt showed an image of a "Venetian Ball, and another is illustrated in Jargstorf's Paperweights, page 8, but neither provide sizes or show more than one view. From the images most people would find it hard to distinguish these from "Scramble" design weights which have canes and twists set inside a clear dome with the effect of magnification appearing to fill the dome with the canes. That's one of the problems with photos of just one view of a paperweight, or "Venetian ball" or whatever.

In fairness, I will also say that another problem with single, basic views of weights - such as in the PCC 1999 Exhibition site - is that cane details can sometimes appear to be not as described! My example of the St Louis "Boule Rouge" weight, appears to show only a few "hollow" canes with the rest having a "grey" or "greenish" centre. And even the "hollow" ones could be argued as having an orange centre. But all of the "cog" canes do have a clear centre.

Getting back to what Adam was told about "hollow" canes making Baccarat weights more special, my own view is that it would be a purely subjective issue. I don't know of any Baccarat weights that are generally regarded as "special" because they have canes that appear to be hollow - hence my original comment about this.

But I do have a "Scottish" Ink Bottle that is special (to me) because it contains an early Vasart cane with a clear ("hollow") centre which under UV light shows as Green, but all the other clear glass in the bottle shows a "modern" non-Green reaction. In this case, the "hollow" cane was very useful to my investigations into "old" Scottish canes in new pieces.
KevinH

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Offline aa

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Hollow canes
« Reply #7 on: May 16, 2005, 10:00:29 PM »
http://tinypic.com/54hgl2
http://tinypic.com/54hgn9

Thanks Kevin. As you know from our discussion at the National Glass Fair, I have been working on a body of paperweights that are made with what I have been referring to as hollow canes. These differ from the hollow canes discussed above in that they really are hollow. They are blown and therefore tubular. Air is entrapped within the cane to make a coloured bubble. As you may be able  to see, although I have to admit these are terrible photos, sometimes one cane is placed inside another to create a bubble within a bubble.
Hello & Welcome to the Board! Sometimes my replies are short & succinct, other times lengthy. Apologies in advance if they are not to your satisfaction; my main concern is to be accurate for posterity & to share my limited knowledge
For information on exhibitions & events and to see images of my new work join my Facebook group
https://www.facebook.com/adamaaronsonglass
Introduction to Glassblowing course:a great way to spend an afternoon http://www.zestgallery.com/glass.

Support the Glass Message Board by finding glass through glass-seek.com


 

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