Topic: Cristalleries de Saint-Louis bowl 1908

[flying free]

   It looks very brassy and shiny in the photo - it's not. It's lovely but it's not as gorgeous as the gold on my Etruscan style plate which dates to about 60 or so years earlier c. 1850. There is an obvious difference.  It's also nothing like that bright shiny gold you find on  1950s glass either.  It's 24ct gold according to their website.  I think applied then fired.

So taking the lampshade as an example, it's two layer cameo glass ruby over clear.  The clear background has that leaf design. The ruby top cameo layer is plain.  It's been blown into a mold for shape and then cased in ruby I guess?  Then somehow that rhombus design has been acid etched onto the background clear glass with the ruby cameo layer being left untouched in certain areas to give the pattern? I presume that's how it's been done as no person has hand etched that design obviously.  But if it was done that way then that's a lot of waste of coloured glass being taken off to just leave the pattern.  Perhaps it was hugely expensive to do hence it being abandoned as a technique eventually?

But how was it etched?  that is the question   The lampshade was blown glass.  So is this bowl and all the goblets I've seen.

Their current bowl with a gold rim about the same size is E.675 so I'm very happy with my new salad bowl 


m

[flying free]

Description here on how old rolled glass was imprinted with a pattern:

https://sashwindowspecialist.com/blog/history-patterned-window-glass/

However, how was achieving a similar effect possible on a curved bowl or goblet?

[Ekimp]

Maybe they used the transfer print resist method - where the design was etched onto a copper plate that was then used to create a transfer of resist that was applied to the glass before acid etching. Ref Hajdamach page 197 as discussed here:

http://www.glassmessages.com/index.php/topic,13714.0.html

I could see that working on your cameo glass shade (the pattern reminded me of tortoise shell) as there are separate areas but on your bowl there might be some sort of seam where the ends of the pattern join. Unless they had a way around that.

[flying free]

Thanks for that.  I will look it up in the book later.
No seam.  That's what so curious about these items.

Also about the cost.  Thinking about it, there are many examples of Baccarat Eglantier around and that's two colour/two layer so I can't imagine it was that overly expensive to do.  Perhaps it was a Baccarat 'connection' that had the ability to produce these items or the machinery/plates required to make them hence so many more of the Baccarat pieces around.
I wonder if the resist also outlined the floral outer coloured layer pattern but how did they do that?
And how did they do the second colour layer full stop?  Was it cased in bands or patch areas or was the whole thing cased and then when the acid resist cut through it removed the coloured layer where the background pattern was?

[Ekimp]

I’m not sure I followed that correctly so might have the wrong end of the stick , but with your shade, I assumed they did the cameo work as normal from a cased blank, the clear background areas being smooth after. Then they could apply the resist transfers for the texture in the clear background areas, resist could then be painted by hand over the flower foreground to protect those areas from the acid when etching the background texture?

It is a fairly loose imprecise pattern on the bowl, maybe they could hide the seam.

[Ekimp]

This glass probably hasn’t got much in common with your items but I think it is an example of the transfer resist acid etched method. It has a band of hatched diamonds, the photos aren’t brilliant, but the texture of the diamonds reminds me of that on your bowl.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/174445372350

[flying free]

Interesting.
Adding a close up of the pattern if I can - hmm, no time to resize at mo.

What I was thinking of was how they did the Eglantier pattern from Baccarat and then managed to get the acid etched background around all the small flowers.  It's as though the whole design was done in one sweep .  The close up on this one is probably a good example:
https://www.richardhoppe.co.uk/glass/dishes-chargers/c1920s-baccarat-lime-green-eglantier-cameo-glass-trinket-tray

[Ekimp]

That’s nice. Obviously just speculating with the transfer method but the baccarat bowl in your link could’ve been done the same way - do the cameo work, then cover the whole thing with the texture transfer resist, then before etching the texture, paint resist by hand on any areas to be left smooth.

[flying free]

I'm wondering is the coloured cameo design  acid etched as well?

This is a good close up of what my bowl is like - not my close up
https://auctions.c.yimg.jp/images.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/image/dr000/auc0411/users/1/8/4/6/fracito6915-img955x1030-15421004085nlaug29901.jpg

[flying free]

Interestingly, the Baccarat Eglantier series of toiletry articles appears in the 1916 catalogue 'tafel 16'

https://www.glas-musterbuch.de/Baccarat-1916-br-Garnitures-de.54+B6YmFja1BJRD01NCZwcm9kdWN0SUQ9MjE1MSZwaWRfcHJvZHVjdD01NCZkZXRhaWw9.0.html

I couldn't see my Baccarat bowl there though.


Of course it could have appeared earlier.  I'm pretty sure my Saint-Louis bowl is correct in being pattern 630 dating  from 1908 catalogue.