Topic: Turquoise dimpled stem glass, clear stem and handmade? foot

[flying free]

I've had a pair of these glasses for years, never thought too much about them as one is cracked, I just assumed they were Borske Sklo, which they may well be. However, I just took them out the cupboard to move something  and had a look a bit more closely.  It's not 'sophisticated' glass, there are striations in the glass and the foot isn't perfectly round.  Turning them over one has a y shaped tool mark on the base and the other a  crossed T shaped tool mark.  Are they handmade feet to my glasses? and are they Borske Sklo or Empoli or something else entirely?  They are dimple moulded where you can feel the dimples faintly on the exterior but very defined on the interior. I assumed they were 1970's - are they?  I thought they were a two part piece - bowl and stem/foot.  Would that fit with a handmade foot?  maybe they are three part pieces?
No photos of the foot unfortunately as my camera is on a canoe trip with my son (who didn't want to take his mobile in case it got damaged, but has taken our expensive camera it seems, without permission  )
thanks for any information 
m

[Lustrousstone]

They look much older, maybe early 20th C IMHO

[flying free]

ok thanks, I might do a bit of looking on these then 
m

[neil53]

Hi, it certainly looks Victorian.  As I said in my post to the other reader, the gadget that leaves this mark came into use in about 1865 and went out of use in about 1890.  The T and Y marks were left by the gadgets (essentially a replacement for the pontil iron that held the foot).  Another type of gadget in use at the time left a swirl mark like a whirlpool.  The colour and construct also look Victorian.  No idea of the manufacturer though but will keep an eye out.  Neil

[flying free]

Wow - thank you so very much!! 
I was only 100 years out then     They've just sat in the back of my kitchen cupboard and I never really took much notice of them.  It was only when Christine mentioned they looked earlier that I thought I might do some searching on them.
Thank you again.
m

[flying free]

I just thought I would move Paul's comments and questions regarding my glass to here as it was posted on another thread regarding drinking glasses.

'Is m's glass optically moulded, or can the moulding be felt on the outside of the bowl.        I understand that pieces with a small collar between the stem and bowl are usually a little older than those without.     This is an unusual design if it's British Victorian  -  what comes to mind are the similarly moulded C20 surfaces from Czechoslovakia, which are occasionally seen on vases and water jugs  -  Steven commented recently on a vase from someone, with this general type of surface design.    I was suggested that this might have been a derivative of the 'large olives' type of pattern.
In terms of scarcity, and going from common to scarce, bowl colours on these sherry/port type glasses are usually green, followed by red, followed by blue, then amethyst.      What if any m, is the extent of wear on the underside of the foot??'

[flying free]

Before answering some of Paul's questions I have one of my own.  You mention colours above and include blue.  Do you mean this kind of turquoisey blue or were you meaning cobalt blue please?
Answering some of those questions :-

- It's difficult to tell, but to my eye the feet on these seem to be nearly flat , i.e no slightly raised middle near the pontil mark etc.  The glass is heavily striated and they aren't round - I think they are handformed.  The wear is there and is in faint scratches randomly on the glass that touches the surface and with some evidence that there is more wear right on the very edge of the feet.  But there is no complete matt ring of wear.

- The dimples can be felt clearly on the inside as half marbles I suppose in terms of size.   On the outside of the glass you can clearly feel an indent on the the top row of the dimples and indeed you can see it indents if you look at it side on.

- You can see a veerrry faint small 1/2 inch vertical line up the side of one of the bowls that looks as though it may have been the beginning of the vertical mould line.

- The clear stem and foot glow very bright yellow under UV Light so a lot of manganese decolourant? The blue bowls also glow slightly yellow

- Interestingly, because I didn't realise the relevance (indeed there may be none) so didn't put both pics on, both the glasses are the same height, however the bowl of one is bigger than the bowl of the other and a slightly different shape at the bottom where it curves, one is squarer than the other, therefore one stem is slightly longer than the other.

- Size wise, they aren't to the best of my mostly non-drinking knowledge, port or sherry glasses.  I think they are wine glasses.  The height is 5 3/4" - the bowls are 2 13/16"wide and are just over 3 1/2" high on one and just under 3 1/2" high on the other.

- I have two very large pieces of Borske Sklo glass.  One has dimples that are more akin to my glasses, but as I can't say they are identical.  It's difficult to tell because it is a huge piece.  The other is a huge Turquoise Olives vase and the dimples and the pattern and the way the pattern feels on the exterior and the interior is completely different.  The colour is also completely different.

Once my camera is charged up I'll attached pics of both glasses and also the bases. 
m 

[Paul S.]

my apologies m  -  when asking my questions, I'd overlooked the fact that you'd posted on this matter some days back - and I'd overlooked that

Re the colour - and I should have made it clear when I mentioned 'blue',  that I was speaking of the traditional Bristol blue  -  in the same way that the green examples are what we'd call Bristol green, generally.        There are, of course, many examples in uranium - which won't look like Bristol green, and if you place a dozen or so green examples together, it's surprising to what extent the 'green' can vary.
Speaking to a guy at Ardingly recently, he told me that he'd seen examples in yellow, and even Queen's Burmese - deadly rare I'd think.
As I've said, Bristol blue is not a common colour for these commonly shaped sherry/port glasses - and your blue is something I've not seen, although whether yours could be called torquoise might be open to question.    To my mind, turquoise is an opaque pale  ish milky blue.

Feet - on period examples of this type of glass - are round, rarely, and are usually quite flat, with the better examples showing a ground/polished pontil depression, and the cheaper versions having a gadget mark.          Better examples will also produce a high quality lead glass ring.

If you can see a mould line, then in my opinion you don't have a C19 or even early C20 example  -  as far as I know, the genuine article had a bowl that was blown, and that little 'blip' or thickening on the rim, indicates jp's shears mark where surplus glass was cut from the rim.  Hold the bowl to the light - sometimes not easy to find the mark.
Striation lines and spiral lines on these pieces indicate 'hand made' - on the bowls these should start from the middle height of the bowl and continue to the rim, and there should be plenty of spiralling out lines on the foot.

Bright yellow under uv doesn't indicate manganese (it should be greenish/grey for that) - Christine will tell you what gives the yellow  -  I've forgotten for the time being, but a yellow glow is another factor indicating a more recent manufacturing date.

Your bowls look, to me, slightly disproportionate to the overall height  -  but these things can vary, so maybe not a significatnt factor  -  but for me it's the colour of the blue that looks more modern.

[flying free]

http://www.glassmessages.com/index.php/topic,35888.msg195070.html#msg195070

I may have got it wrong but I understood that manganese was used as a decoloriser in old glass and in clear glass would produce a yellowish- green glow (see link above).  I have said yellow as this is what I see but I suppose it could actually be called yellowish green.  It's fuzzy and I see it as yellow.  I do believe it is down to the decoloriser.

I have to beg to differ on the yellow glow under blacklight indicating newer glass.  I have what I am fairly certain is a mid to possibly later 19th century cut glass Victorian lustre.  Under a blacklight it glows very yellow.  Likewise the Nautilus crackle glass shells and a Mont Joye enamelled clear glass rose bowl I own which was produced c 1900.

With regard the mould lines, I believe what I can see on the bowls(only the bowls not the stems or foot) is mould lines.  If they were free blown, how would they get the dimples in the glass please?  I've seen what I believe are Victorian  cranberry glass dimpled jugs with regular dimples.  How would they get the dimples in those without blowing into a mould first?

You keep referring to them as port or sherry glasses - are they? is that size a common size for these? They are the size of what I think of as wine glasses or water glasses, not any port or sherry glass I own but perhaps in the olden days lol, they drank huge quantities of port and sherry.  The bowls are tall, they aren't disproporionate in person, but they aren't hock glass type size v stem length if you see what I mean.

Turquoise is a greeny blue version of blue.  It can be milky or clear, it's the shade of blue that is the defining factor on the colour name.

There are spiralling-out circular lines on the foot and there are also circular lines around the top of the bowls of the glasses that start above the dimple line.  The glass looks like old bottle bottom or bullseye window glass effect, it's difficult to see through.  It looks like the old windows in our house where views are distorted by looking through it. 
Looking at them again I think they are made in three parts maybe? 

I now don't think these glasses are new, I don't think they are Mexican or Spanish recycled glass type items and they don't look like the glass of my Borske Sklo pieces now I have done a proper comparison.  That's not to say they aren't Borske Sklo pieces.  I don't know.  But would they have been producing glasses with these features in this way?  The only thing that looks similar to my Borske Sklo pieces is that they have dimples.  I'm not sure that is enough to categorise them as Borske Sklo.
m

[flying free]

the dimples look like the dimples on this jug
http://www.sellingantiques.co.uk/antiquedetail.asp?autonumber=112044

and this small Borske Sklo piece illustrates I hope what I 'see' as the difference in the moulding - when you look at the dimples on this bell the effect is 'round', when you look at the dimples on my glasses the effect is 'honeycomb' shape to each of the dimples even though I'm sure they are round if you see what I mean?
m