How would you tell a pressed blank, Bernard? I've looked at it under magnification and I can't see mould lines anywhere. What should I be looking for? ...
Mould lines can disappear under cutting, Leni, so in their absence first check the outside (rim, sides and base) for surfaces that would be difficult or impossible to cut. Then check the inside, thinking how it was formed. It was either a bubble, manipulated from outside, either by hand or by a shape mould, or the shape of the plunger. If you see nice flat surfaces meeting at a constant angle, then it's almost certainly pressed, and you're looking at the shape of the plunger.
An example of how difficult it can be is the PV cruet bottle shown on p.50 of Thompson. It took me several months to work out how it was made, and only then after noticing that the inside base was perfectly flat! That cruet bottle is pressed glass, with the main decoration pressed. It was moulded with a long tube continuing above the main body, which was then re-shaped by hand to form the neck and rim, with hand-polished flake cuts to the neck. The gadget mark to the base was removed by the leveller.
... how would I tell if it was hand polished? ...
Look for the lovely faint striations of the cutting wheel on the cut surfaces. These marks, which add further sparkle to the piece, disappear with acid polishing, leaving the outcome looking rather dull by comparison. Sadly the relative costs of a quick dunk in an acid bath and laborious hand-polishing resulted in hand-polishing almost completely disappearing during the second quarter of the last century. Firms like Walsh refused to drop their standards, and so were priced out of existence. I'm sure that hand-polishing is still available, but it would be expensive.
See Christine's recent topic
here.
Bernard C.
Topic: Tiny cut glass salt (Read 1280 times)
