Topic: Can anyone help with IDing this little PW?

[westred]

  I picked up this PW from an antique mall about a year ago and have never been able to ID it.  It is roughly 2 1/4" tall, 1 3/4" wide, and has a perfectly cut and polished bottom of 1".  Besides the 6 millefiori flower pedals, it has a small yellow butterfly atop one of the cane petals and a red heart atop one on the opposite side.  T thought it may be Murano, because other the cut and polished bottom, thus leaving no real pontil mark?  It is very accuratley done and the photos really do not do it justice, as to the real craftsmanship of the piece.  I don't know if you can make it out in the photo, but the petal just to the right of the petal with the butterfly looks like a chicken head and it only looks that way on the inside!  I thought it was just a flaw, but the more I magnified it, it sure looks intentional!  And right on that small petal (that looks like a chicken head), is a very small letter B in gray!  Very unusual..............

  If anyone has any idea to where this may have been made or who may have made it, would you please give me your thoughts?   I figured it is kind of a weird thing that you guys might want to see anyway.  Who knows?  But that is , to me, the fun of collecting!  The mystery you have to uncover......

  Photos below:

[antiquerose123]

Hi there - I can't make out the B, or maybe I just not looking well enough -- will look again.

[westred]

The B is very hard to see at all!  Maybe I will try and take a couple of shots through a magnifier and see if I can get a better picture.  The 4 photos from my first post don't really show it well.

  Here are 3 photos I just took.  The first is just a photo through a magnifying glass.  The other two are high resolution shots that I cropped and then edited one to try and bring more contrast out.
Also see how the front side of the murrine bead or millefiori looks like a chicken head?  It's weird, but the other side does not look like that on the outside.  I may be grasping at straws, but I thought, maybe, one of the members here had seen something like it before.

[tropdevin]

***

When you distort millefiori canes during manufacture you get all sorts of weird and wonderful shapes.  I wrote an article called 'Alphabet Soup' about such effects - it is in the Annual PCA Bulletin a few years ago.

I think the 'B' and other shapes in your weight are just serendipity - they are not intended.  My guess is that it is a product of a small studio somewhere, perhaps using Murano canes.

Alan

[westred]

Thanks for your input Alan!  I really appreciate it!

 Tom

[KevinH]

I think that what you are calling a "B" is actually two air bubbles with some shadow around them!

The effect of one cane having two appearances from each end when set in a weight is quite common. The process of picking up the canes on the first gather of glass will embed the "bottom" of the canes in clear glass and hold then quite firmly. When the upper portions are worked on the marver and the extra clear is added and worked for the dome, many of the canes will get some degree of distortion, but often only as an enlarging effect. Sometimes, the result is amazingly different.

There are many cases of "obvious shapes" being accidentally created out of star and "daisy" canes which have become distorted. And there are cases of a cane losing some of its elements because of distortions.

As an example, from a signed Paul Ysart weight, the two images below are of the same cane. The one showing a dark interior is the view through the top of the weight and the one with the well-formed cog canes in the interior is as seen thorugh the clear, flat base of the weight. These really are the same cane - just that the top view is severely distorted and loses most of the true interior.

[tropdevin]

***

I think that is a really good example, Kev.

I wish that all the 'I know it is a Clichy because it has a C cane' brigade would study your post!

Alan