Topic: Scottish weight with unusual signature or date cane - help needed

[alexander]

Hi, I recently bought this weight, it's a closepack, medium sized, one facet (top), firepolished pontil, Scottish weight.

It appears to have 70'ies Strathearn canes and was marked with a handwritten paper label,
by first owner perhaps, "Crieff Oct 1971".

The interesting thing is a cane I spotted when going over it with a magnifying glass.

It appears to say either 70. or 7C. or Vd. or .PA

It's a tiny cane and not very easy to photograph,
I took some pics that I hope someone will recognize or know
the significance of.

Thanks in advance 

Closeup of cane
Closeup of cane - inverted
Bigger picture - more canes

[alexander]

Looking at it again it could also read .PL

Thanks

[Frank]

Looks like just a fault, these often get assumed to be numbers or letters.

[alexander]

Could be - I'm pretty sure they're in the cane and not a speck of dust,
with the cane only about 4mm across it's hard to photograph.

They look crisper with a magnifying glass. Since the dome is flat there is less of a magnifying effect
in the weight itself.

[cfosterk]

Definitely starthearn close-packed and not a signature cane. Those are fairly distinctive.

In the gather there can be some distortion of the millefiori canes, some of the tubes can behave unusually and partially collapse, so two identical canes can look remarkably different on the finished item.

[alexander]

Interesting.

I have seen some variants of Strathearn signatures so I didn't think this was a regular sign. cane as such.
I thought it could be some kind of experimenting or somesuch.

When I'm looking at it I don't understand how the colors came to be inside the cane?
Would this be a case of a blob of different color glass sneaking in and the cane not being binned?

I will try to get better pics tomorrow when I can get some help from natural light, my camera
is a light hog and doesn't really take good indoor pics.

Thanks