appearance of carved rock crystal became especially popular during the final two decades of the nineteenth century in Great Britain. The style was also used, in a somewhat simplified form for the most part, in the United States from about 1890.
The British glass scholar Charles R. Hajdamach (1991, p. 234) unequivocally states that the rock-crystal style has "three main characteristics: deep cutting, copper-wheel engraving and final polishing". Somewhat confusingly the style is also sometimes referred to as "polished intaglio" (Charleston 1990, p. 199). Hajdamach continues as follows:
Firstly the glass has to be shaped by cutting, usually with pillars or roundels, from a thick blank to provide the basic shape. The pillared decoration by the glass cutter is extremely skilful, difficult and time-consuming as it is cut out of the solid with mathematical precision that belies its hand operation. Because the cutting is later covered by engraving this essential part of the process is often greatly underrated. The glass is next passed to the copper-wheel engraver who carves the finer details which complement the deeper cutting. For example the engraving may consist of leaves and flowers which grow out of the stems formed by the deep cutting. The third requisite is the polishing of the cutting and the engraving to restore the original polish to the glass.
The Stourbridge factory of Thomas Webb and Sons, at the Dennis Glass Works, was the first firm to use the term "rock crystal", for entries in a pattern book that are dated 6 Jul 1878. Two of the company's principle engravers were the Bohemian immigrants Frederick Engelbert Kny and William Fritsche. The latter is usually credited with introducing the style at Webb's, but there is no documentation. Hajdamach suggests that "its introduction may have been a joint venture by the two great Bohemian engravers" (Hajdamach 1991, p. 238). William Fritsche worked intermittently for two and a half years on the masterpiece of this genre, completing in 1886 "Fritsche's Ewer" a tour-de-force of "baroque power and rhythm" that can be seen at the Corning Museum of Glass (Charleston 1990, pp. 188-189).
Stevens and Williams Ltd., Webb's main competitor in the Stourbridge area, introduced rock crystal a year after Webb. Most of its rock crystal glass was engraved by John Orchard and Len Beach who often used designs created by another Bohemian immigrant engraver, Joseph Keller. After 1900 the additional firms of Webb Corbett and Stuart and Sons "made their own versions of rock crystal with a mixture of art nouveau and neo-classicism under the direction of two of Frederick Kny's sons, William and Ludwig" (Hajdamach 1991, p. 247)...............
Topic: How does one identify "rock-crystal" glass? (Read 13066 times)
