Topic: CIIG signature? ID = Caithness seconds

[Derek]

Hi all

As Frank says the only real way forward on this is to get the facts from a former employee of Caithness - David/KevH - I have looked at my "second" weight  and note that one yellow petal is distinctly longer than the others and the end of one leaf is slightly ragged.

I suspect that Caithness adopt various tolerances to faults from no faults on very low edition sized limited edition weights through to a very lax standard on unlimited edition weights. It would be interesting to hear whether - as Leni says - they treated pieces of 'frit', distortions in the dome, slipped canes or lampwork any differently to poor design interpretation.

Lynn - The frieze on my weight in 1/2" up from the rim and from the photo of Davids weight I suspect his is the same - so the frieze cannot be to hide chips on the rim and the only other place you are likely to get damage is on the waist of the weight if two weights touch together and the waist is a good 1" above the top of the frieze.

My own theory is that Caithness produced some of the these weights with the frieze when they were developing the design. Everything is down to cost in a factory operation like Caithness and when the totted up the total time taken WITH the frieze included, the weight was just over the time limit to fall into the price band at which they were aiming to sell it. So something had to go - in this case the frieze. They then marked all the trial ones with the frieze as seconds as they were different to the production design and sold them off in the factory shop. I know this practice happens as I have the triple overlay "Midnight Orchids". My copy came from one of the design team staff and has an additional row of facetting which I suspect just pushed it over the £500 issue price - take of the row of facetting and you can price it as Caithness did at £495 - just below an important psychological barrier.

Best regards

Derek

[glasstrufflehunter]

I have a CIIG shamrock weight that has a couple very tiny bubbles on the colourground. Other than that it looks perfect. I think I got it for about £10. It was a good price to me!

[Frank]

As to design interpretation, as I have been processing their catalogues I come across different images of the same weight that would test an observer to match them for design. You will find this extra shots included sometimes in the extra pics.