Topic: GORGEOUS BOWL..ID PLEASE..ITS DRIVING ME MAD!!

[jonchellycain]

Now, im maddly in love with this bowl becasue it is really beautiful  :chky:, ive seen something very similar somewhere and now cant find where i saw it  ive spent the last several months searching through all my books websites and ever where i can think i may have seen it.
It is really well made very good quality and sooooo pretty, its made from a clear glass with a blue i want to say "powder" i think it may be called mica??, in like a swirl design with lots of tiny bubbles and larger bubbles at the end of each swirl. The base has a ground out and well polished pontil, no signiatures that i have been able to find (ive spent alot of time studying this piece so if there was one i would have found it by now  :spls:). My partner jon thinks it WMF as the quality, feel and weight is similar to a bowl we once had which was Ikora range WMF
25.5cms in diameter, pontil 4.5cms in diameter
I would love to find out who it was made by, i only paid a couple of pound for it, so whatever its a bargain because i love it..
many thanks
michelle

[Andy]

Hi Michelle,
looks a nice bowl, the pictures dont show the colours or stripes very well, have a look at this thread,
http://www.glassmessages.com/index.php/topic,18660.0.html
a pink bowl, stripes / pontil appear similar, didnt get to an attribution though.
does yours look similar, also count the stripes, that may help someone.
Good luck
Andy

[jonchellycain]

Ive had a look i dont think its that similar to be honest, its hard to say from pictures though  , that one appears more like glass stripes inside, & has the foot
There are 20 of the stripes, its really hard to explain this one, they dont appear to be glass not in the melted form and the colour looks like its just coming from the bubbles/powder ? really stunning and the more you look at it the more you can see how good it is.. virtually impossibly to get it across on pictures but ive taken some more and hopefully you can see what i mean.
The base has no foot at all, if you turn it over it looks like... do you remember them sherbet centre sweets when you was a kid.. flying saucers.. thats what it looks like, with the middle bit popped in where the pontil is  :hiclp:
many thanks
michelle

[Lustrousstone]

The blue powder will be frit, powdered glass, and possibly mixed with a chemical to produce bubbles. Now Adam can tell me I'm wrong

[jonchellycain]

I HAVE FOUND WHERE I SAW, I KNEW I EVENTUALLY WOULD  :hiclp: IVE BEEN SEARCHING ALL MY BOOKS TODAY FOR SOMETHING COMPLETLY DIFFERNT, BUT IN THE DK COLLECTORS GUIDE 20TH CENTURY GLASS BY JUDITH MILLER PAGE 41 (OPPPS sorry for caps been on turbo lister preparing adverts ) bottom left is a bowl  very similar to this on in size and shape and infact colour is very similar too, called a cardinals hat dish 21.5cms in dia made for Iittala designed by Timo Sarpaneva. It is signed where mine is not and it doesnt have the frit.bubble effect which mine has does anybody else think there maybe a link?

[krsilber]

That IS a gorgeous bowl!  Could you show a close-up of the glass?  Is the rim hollow, or just round?  It almost looks like it could be Steuben Cintra, which is made much as Christine described.  Glass frit is picked up on the parison (bubble).  It is then cased in a layer of colorless glass, trapping bubbles around the frit.   

[Lustrousstone]

I don't think the shape is necessarily a clue, it's not that unusual

[Ivo]

same stuff, different design - but may serve to limit the time frame to 60s/70s. I have it in the Czech collection, for no apparent reason.

[jonchellycain]

Im afraid i cant do much better really than this one, will try to get a few more later. The quality really is high on this piece
thanks michelle

[krsilber]

Just a follow-up note about techniques of bubble-making - might help to know what to look for when comparing other glass...

Different methods are used to make random, evenly spaced, and patterns of bubbles like the stripes on this piece.  I should have turned the page when reading about Steuben Cintra - the next piece described was Cluthra, and they mention there that "a chemical" (e.g. soda or potash, according to Ricke's Glass Art)was mixed with the frit to make bubbles of various sizes (and larger than those produced with Cintra).  Another method of making regular patterns is rolling the parison in moist sawdust.  Both methods required quick casing to stop the gas from escaping.  Random bubbles may be made by adding stuff directly to the pot of molten glass; I think Carder used ash branches.  Evenly spaced bubbles can be created using tools or molds, followed by a cased layer trapping air in the pockets.  I'm sure there are other methods, too.