I've got no first hand experience of gold rubies/cranberry manufacture. However the selenium types (note plural) most certainly have striking characteristics. Some blow types, I believe, are straw colour after blowing and only strike to ruby in the lehr. Note that, in my experience it is always straw > ruby, not the other way round although, of course, if cullet is remelted then we start again.
Generally a thin edge may not strike fully to ruby. That can be a fault or deliberate. In the distant past (i.e. my time), before plastics took over the job, vehicle rear light glasses often had straw coloured rims, which did not matter because they were covered by the fitting. In the early days of amber flashers we made an experimental piece shaped like a poached egg. The middle bit struck to ruby and the outside was amber - two for the price of one! It could never have gone into production as, apart from the practical difficulties, there was no hope of matching the official amber ("signal yellow", i.e. orange).
If one makes a ruby art glass article which turns out to have a yellowish edge I think a good spin doctor could sell it as deliberate! I understand Scrubbs' Cloudy Ammonia (which your grandmother might remember) started that way.
Adam D.
Topic: Blenko or tat? (Read 4404 times)
