I wonder about the marking of studio glass with the date.
Although other works of art and studio craft are sometimes dated, it seems to me the practice has been more common with glass than, say, pottery. Am I right? I wonder why? One possibility is that pottery is more frequently marked with a stamp, either into the wet clay or in ink on a flat surface, whereas it is little extra effort to add the date when engraving a maker's name onto glass. But even then when pots are incised by hand to show the maker they are infrequently marked with the date.
It also seems the practice of date marking of studio glass is less common now than in the 1970s and 1980s. Am I right? I was told by one artist that he stopped applying the date because people were resistant to buying work from a year or two earlier because it seemed "old". Is that a common experience?
I am intrigued by the precision in some cases. The year is most common, but occasionally the month or even the day has been marked. Michael Rayner (founder of Island Glass and Alum Bay Glass) seems to have been a practitioner, at least in early times. The example below carries only the month, but there are instances on this Board where items of his are reportedly inscribed "3RD JULY 1974" and "24th October 1977". Marking a special occasion is one possible explanation for attaching a day date, but it becomes less plausible with each occurrence (and with the absence of examples to the contrary).
Any insights?
Trevor