Thank you so much for the links and the additional photos! And thanks for the catalog pictures, Frank!
OK, I've dug through all of my egg plates and found that I had one of the small ones as well as the ruby stained egg plates. I cannot see any obvious difference* between the three egg plates I have in this pattern, but they each weigh a different amount. The ruby stained one weighs only 1 pound 12.6 ounces (and to recap, my clear one weighs 1 pound 15.6 ounces and my blue stained one weighs 2 pounds 2 ounces). They each are 9.5 inches wide, and I have laid them upside down across each other and they do not appear to vary in width by more than a millimeter, if that. The heavier egg plates are just a wee bit taller, though -- and I think that is because they were left with the bottom rim unfinished after they were un-molded. The ruby stained egg plate, which appears to be older, has a polished bottom rim and some wear scratches on it.
*On minute inspection, there is a very minor difference between them. The hobs in the center of the ruby stained egg plate are completely separated from each other by a small bit of flat glass. On both my clear egg plate and blue stained egg plate, the hobs appear slightly larger and they are touching each other, having almost a hexagon shaped edge.
The ribs around the center circle of hobnails are the same on all three egg plates; and the hobnails on the bottom of the egg hollows are also the same on all three egg plates, being touching each other as in the center of my clear and blue stained ones.
Considering how similar these all are, I am revising my theory that they were made by different companies. They are, in my opinion, too closely similar for one to be a copy. The variations probably are due to the factory having more than one mold in production or perhaps a slight reworking of the mold as time went by and it became worn.
Regarding the difference in the center, where the catalog has another ring of ribs, while the actual egg plates have hobnails, I have two ideas. One is that the catalog has a drawing rather than an actual photo, and such have been known to vary slightly from the actual mold. The other is the slight chance that I could be remembering wrong what the center of the marked Portieux egg plate looked like. I obtained my clear glass egg plate just a week or two before the (broken) marked one, and I think I would have noticed if the centers were different, but time has a way of clouding memory. (Unfortunately, I didn't think to take a photo, at the time.)
Now, for the small plate. I have always thought it was an oyster plate. However, the hollows are fairly small, so maybe not. However, its hollows are larger than the hollows on the egg plates. Using a caliper, I measured the inside dimension at the base of the scallop (where the ribs are). On the small plate they are 2.23 inches. On the egg plates they are 1.83 inches. There are 15 ribs on the edge of the scallop, vs. 11 on the egg plates. The inside length dimension of the hollows are 2.45 inches long, while the egg hollows are 2.28 inches long. These are relatively small differences, though, and the hollows of the small plate are smaller than on other glass oyster plates I have. So... if anyone knows what Portieux called the small plate, that would be helpful to know. :-)
Additional notes on the small plate. It is 8 3/16 inches wide. It is marked in the glass, Portieux. It also has hobnails in the center circle, and those and the hobnails on the bottoms of the hollows are the kind that are touching each other, appearing almost hexagonal on the edges. They appear identical to the hobnails on the egg plates (except for the center of the ruby stained one.) The bottom rim is polished.
Topic: Can someone confirm/deny this is a Portieux? egg plate (Read 4999 times)
