Topic: Lacy salt

[Ivo]

Can anyone ID this lacy salt?

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[glasswizard]

Ivo, this may not be much help, but here goes. There is a book 5,000 open salts by Wiliam Heacock and Patricia Johnson. In the book is shown a page of lacy salts found in an 1840 catalogue of Launay, Hautin et Cie, a French company distributing the glass of Baccarat, St. Louis and other lesser known glass houses. I quoted from the book. One of the salts appears to be identical to yours. So IMHO at least we know its French. Terry

[Ivo]

Fantastic find Terry - I have the full Launay&Hautin catalogues lying around somewhere so I should be able to find it no problem.
Thanks again

[glasswizard]

Your welcome. As the book also states, many of the French lacy salts are very similar to known American production. This fact has always fascinated me. It has been stated that lacy glass was produced to hide the imperfections in the glass. This has never really squared with me. We are talking about the early years of American glass production  and to my eye the patterns are so complicacted and the early years of production can be described as crude as best. Possibly a Fench connection that has not been fully explored? Ah well, that I will leave for someone else. I am still trying to learn the proper pronunciation of Scandinavian designers and companies. Terry

[Ivo]

I believe that in the early days american glass presses must have been delivered with standard set of "get started" moulds. I find the same open salts from Sandwich glass, from Karhula, from Louis Zoude, from Saint Louis - there must be others as well.