Topic: Flint Decanter ? ( ID help )

[Gilead]

hello fellow members.
                              Well have made the move and managed to pop my head in the local charity shop and picked up this decanter for a whopping £1, wonder if any one can help me id it please, the decanter stands 8incs with out the stopper and 10incs with it, the pontil is polished the stopper as a controlled bubble in it, i think flint is the proper name of the colour? and not clear :huh: have still got to unpack the glass i collected before the move and plan to have a big car boot blow put once i have sorted what to keep. cheers all.
                                                                                                                                                              Steve

[Della]

Hi Steve,

Colourless  (aimed at a certain person!  you know who you are  ). 

[Ivo]

it is clear glass. Flint is not a colour (except with Whitefriar's collectors it seems) but a specific type of crystal, esp. in the Americas - just search the board for a very recent discussion on Flint.

[krsilber]

I couldn't find a very recent (within the last 90 days) discussion about flint, but this old one suggests the use of the word has been pretty variable
http://www.glassmessages.com/index.php/topic,1773.0.html

Still, it seems to usually refer to colorless lead glass.  If your decanter has lead in it, I'd think that flint is an acceptable term (for hundreds of years it hasn't been literally accurate anyway).

[Gilead]

Cheers krsilber
                      it's got no lead in it well at least i dont think so, clear we will call it any idia whom the maker may be at first i thought WF, but no. so could it be polish ?

[Ivo]

I beg your pardon we are NOT going to replace the word crystal with a misunderstood americanism like "flint".   

[krsilber]

Americanism!?  The English have been using it far longer than we have, and according to Bernard, "Sowerby, Davidson, Jobling and Bagley all used the term "flint" around the 1930s to '60s to describe standard uncoloured glass."  The only context Americans use it now is in early lead EAPG.

I wasn't advocating using the term anyway.   

So "clear" is the word you use for colorless glass?

[Frank]

Owens used flint to describe uncoloured non lead glass too. Personally, I like having a variety of terms to cover the same things in different contexts and it helps keep alive the different ways that words have been applied. Which in turn helps to make sense of older texts.

In 1999 Raymond Notley published Pressed Flint Glass (ISBN: 0852637829) in the UK.
Bibliography entry

[Frank]

See http://www.glassmessages.com/index.php/topic,10321.msg124233.html#msg124233 re origin of Flint glass use.

[johnphilip]

OH lets not all have another big row over trivia,next we will all be carrying knives.  BORING.