Topic: Flashed and engraved 60's blue vase

[Ivo]

It could be spray paint you know. The Chinese do a lot of this: industrial glass, fire polished rim, decorate with spray on colour, a few quick cut decorations and presto. Minimum order size 50,000. You can test it with a knife but it is destructive. You can also lose the coating if you wash it with a vinegar based "eco-friendly" washing up liquid.

I cannot say it often enough: never trust a coloured vase with a clear bottom.

[Scott13]

You could well be right Ivo.
The engraving however has been done extremely skilfully ( wheel) and it's weight and base wear makes me think that it can't be Chinese. Of course this could all be wishful thinking on my part.
I know some Chinese glass is  pretty good ,and if this is one of theirs, then I'm going to start collecting it ;starting today.
Scott

[Scott13]

Hi---could this flash vase, conceivably be, an engraved Geoffrey Baxter piece?
The colour and age are right. I've come to the conclusion that it's colour is probably Whitefriars Sapphire Blue.
Introduced in 1949. It's the best match I could find.
It also has features in common with a GB fish engraved vase shown in Miller's , Glass of the 50's & 60's, A Collector's Guide, by Nigel Benson. ( page 42 )
The mouths (if I can call them that) of the seed pods ( my vase) look exactly the same as the mouths of the fish ( G B's vase)
I'm pretty sure the leaves and petals ( of the larger flower) of my vase ,have also been fashioned by
" a single unpolished sweep of the wheel " as described by Nigel Benson in his book.
The " sparse, fine, wheel-engraved lines " mentioned by Nigel Benson are common to both vases.
Any thoughts?

[Paul S.]

from the few examples of W/F's I've had, I can't see this one as remotely being Sapphire blue  -  which is very much a sort of transparent light/pale blue, and certainly lacks the slight surface appearance of iridescence - as can be seen on your vase, Scott.
This one has an almost dark appearance compared to Sapphire.

There are plenty of examples of sapphire in Leslie Jackson's book 'Whitefriars Glass'.

[brucebanner]

This looks fairly new to me, i have a set of champagne glasses similar to this i'm going to use for my daughters  18th this year (just in case they get broken), the base wear is not reliable in dating anything on it's own, here is one of the kids favourite glasses about 8 years old and the champagne with a similar cut and colour.

Regards Chris.

[Lustrousstone]

Definitely not Whitefriars and the "seed pods" are lily of the valley.

[Scott13]

Thanks for your illuminating replies. Much appreciated.
As for me---it's back to the learning curve.
Scott

[Paul S.]

join the club........    many of us go through the same process.           If you use the Board's search facility - and punch in something like  Whitefriars sapphire blue   or similar, then this should bring up enough links with pix to help with understanding quite what sapphire looks like in the flesh.          Similarly, the same approach should help with other colours.

There may be several sources here than are equally as good, but if you look at Emmi Smith's (Vidrioguapo)      Whitefriars site, I'm sure there will be much there to help - at least with W/F's colours.
http://s37.photobucket.com/albums/e57/emmismith/#!cpZZ1QQtppZZ16

I hope the link works - I'm not too good at these techie things.

[Scott13]

Hi---I'm pretty hopeless when it comes to identifying colours, so thanks for the advice and providing the link---and thanks also for the reassuring words.