Topic: uranium glass bowl?

[lmj]

Hi i would appreciate any ID on this bowl/is it uranium glass? it stands at 3" high 9" wide with 3 peach coloured scrolled legs,crackle glass with a green glow also what would i use at home to find out if glass is uranium.Lynn

[Lustrousstone]

Hi Lynn,
Welcome to the board. Please don't think we were ignoring you. No answer usually means no-one knows, yet. You don't need to repost, just answer yourself to bump things back up to the top.

If your bowl really is uranium glass, it will have a really bright green glow under a UV light. The only 100% sure way to tell requires geiger counters then chemical analysis: a UV light is a good indicator once you know what you are looking for. The slightly fuzzy green glow on your top picture indicates to me that it might be, BUT I have also seen modern green crackle glass bowls with peach scroll feet that definitely weren't. The picture on your other post gave no clues.

Beware ebay, there are lots of sellers who use the word uranium to cover all green glass without knowing if it is or isn't or even what uranium glass is, and others who use "uranium-green glass" as a term to trip the unknowing. (Uranium imparts a yellow colour, only in combination with some other colorant do you get green.)

[malwodyn]

It  is always difficult to tell Uranium Glass from a photograph, but a small lamp of the kind used to detect fake banknotes will give you a quick indication whether there is any uranium in the piece.  These lamps can be found either as mains or battery-operated, and can be bought fairly cheaply.

I notice the feet on your bowl have a golden tint.  I have a small posy basket with a rustic handle of a similar colour that also fluoresces under UV light - an indication that it contains uranium.

Do let us know whether your bowl does glow!

[Lustrousstone]

The feet are unlikely to contain uranium, amber uranium glass is quite uncommon, in my experience.

Malodwyn, I would think it unlikely that amber handle on your basket does contain uranium, although I could be wrong. It may, however, contain manganese which gives a dull greenish glow. Not everything that glows green is uranium glass

[malwodyn]

After reading Christine's reply to my post, I went back and looked again at my basket.  Under the UV light it glows a very bright yellow, while the handle glows a similar yellow, though there are dark streaks which seem to indicate either that the UV light is being impeded, or that something in the glass is damping down the fluoresence.

Interestingly, I checked another posy basket which has a similar handle, and which looks identical in daylight.  That shows nothing at all under UV.

As I understand it, the effect of UV light on glass containing Uranium can be either a green or a yellow fluorescence, and indeed both are shown in Barrie Skelcher's book. 

[Lustrousstone]

both are shown in Barrie Skelcher's book.

On which pages?

Skelcher describes the fluorescence as yellow/green and almost all his photos are taken with a flash, not under UV. He also says that the true colours are difficult to reproduce photographically. I have hundreds of pieces of uranium glass (in about seven or eight different colours, even more different shades) that all glow a very bright green, a green that is nearer yellow than blue admittedly, but still green.

[lmj]

as an added note would the acid etched parts class it as vaseline glass?  lynn

[Lustrousstone]

No. Vaseline glass is a variety of uranium glass, strictly speaking it is only the greenish yellow variety. This is the colour imparted by the use of uranium oxide when used as the only colorant because that is the colour that Vaseline used to be before it was the purified form we see today.

Some people, however, call all uranium glass, vaseline glass.

You never did tell us if this bowl glows a very bright green under a UV light

[lmj]

Hi Christine thanks for your reply but no it doesn't glow green,it just reflects the purple glow..a bit slow in testing as i have just bought a tester,so i think it is just crackle glass,but i have no idea who made it. lynn

[Lustrousstone]

In that case, modern and probably made in eastern Europe or the Far East