Husband and I bought our first ever pieces of Monart recently. We were getting back into visiting antiques fairs to hunt for glass after a 20-year period when resources had to be directed elsewhere. In the interim, we bought one piece of contemporary studio art glass every five years.
So we should have been much more cautious about the pair of nine inch tall Monart vases that we were offered at a very reasonable price by a friendly Scottish dealer who had a lot of Ysart glass on his stand. Under the yellow indoor light of a room deep in the bowels of the fair's venue, they appeared to be in good condition. I spotted a string of manufacturing grooves on one, an emerald green bucket vase, but not the extent of them, nor the sheer amount of ash stuck in them. The real disappointment, though, is the sack-shaped vase of the same height and in the same green, but with a dark-toned, everted rim with aventurine inclusions. When we examined it in daylight back at home there were numerous cracks. Some are small, but several around the base and one in the wall are much more significant. Photos below, but please bear in mind that I'm still experimenting with exposure and white balance for glass photography. I've outlined the cracks with a soft water-soluble pencil.
Any thoughts about where and how I can get the cracks stabilised would be gratefully received, as would any observations about the commonness or otherwise of this kind of damage to Monart glassware. I did read the interesting forum discussion in the link below, but some years have passed and there may be additional knowledge about this subject now.
https://www.glassmessages.com/index.php/topic,12801.0.html