Topic: addition to Stuart pattern.

[Anne]

Just thought I'd pop these in to add to the post...

Oooh nice! I've not seen the olives design before yours. The cherries are lovely too. I have three grapefruit dishes with a fruit design on them...

[Anne]

Hello Peter S.

I live in Warragul about 100kms East of Melbourne, Australia.  A while back I bought a Jug & 5 Iced Teas in A Woodchester pattern in Blue.  First time I had ever seen it and I bought it off Ebay.  Some 18 months later I was in Queensland and at a tiny town called KilKivan found another different style of jug and 6 tumblers.  I did not buy them for the $65 asked because they were GLASS not crystal.

 A month later a horrible thought occurred what if my blue one were actually glass - the stickers did not mention crystal.  I had an iced tea that was crystal so it was easy to check.  The blue stetting is GLASS not crystal and I missed the other set!

I wonder are your blue items glass rather than crystal?

Ross

Ross, those are a gorgeous colour!  Your glasses look to be a narrower version of my pink flared one further up this topic: http://www.glassmessages.com/index.php/topic,40522.msg226014.html#msg226014.

[ahremck]

The blue glass vessels are simply described as Iced Tea as part of a Fruit Drink & Quencher Set in the catalog I have.  Anne yours look very like Champagne glasses(only in certain ranges Carlingford, Beau, & Beaconsfield for example).

Perhaps I should have differentiated the two types of Stuart items.  Blue "Glass" does not have the same density as the "Clear" version I have of these.  I used GLASS to mean the lower density, and CRYSTAL to mean the normal higher density.

Here is a photo of the two I compared.  As you can see same shape and size.  However the clear "Grapevine" item weighs 233 grams, the blue "Woodchester" only 201 grams.  The clear one weighs nearly 17% more than the blue.  So I classified the clear as the normal Stuart Crystal, and the blue as Stuart Glass.

I was merely wondering if you compared the weights of a blue Stratford Dessert to another say Grapevine decorated version are they lighter and thus capable as being seen as glass as I have done.

[Paul S.]

Hi Ross - hope you didn't think I was being critical in a serious sense   ...........   sometimes the words we use (all of us), can be less than clear in meaning to others, and crystal has always been one of those   ..........   in truth I'd like to see it confined to lead content glass, as in 'Lead Crystal'  -  and of course the use of simply the word glass might not convey very much, since all of what we collect is 'glass'.             There appears to have been a habit of using 'crystal' to describe clear glass - whether there was a lead content, or not.
Regret I've no knowledge as to why the type of Stuart glass discussed in this thread should show a range of densities/weights  -  this might imply a lead content, or not - perhaps some silica has a greater density than others?             Obviously, thickness will cause similar shaped pieces to differ in weight, but if as you're saying they are 'same shape and size', then it seems to rule out that suggestion, unless small thickness variations might be the culprit.
As a purely uneducated guess, I wouldn't have thought those pieces shown here were made with lead, but I could be very wrong - would be good if someone can comment on that.            Unfortunately, I no longer have any pieces from this general range, but occurs to me to wonder if someone might put a u.v. torch over some of their clear pieces - I seem to remember something about lead showing up as grey/blue and a yellowish colour if it's absent - we had acres of discussion on this topic, but it was at least ten years ago.
............  and still looking for a Stuart label that says 'lead crystal'