Topic: Purple glass Bottle vase unusual shape

[wiggy131]

Hello everyone! Can you help ID this lovely bottle necked purple glass vase. It has a polished pontill, so it looks like a well made piece,
Best Wishes
Vickie

[glassobsessed]

Looks almost Caithness like. How tall is it?

John

[wiggy131]

Hello John
             It's 8 inches tall.
Thanks Vickie

[glassobsessed]

Well... it looks like it has similarities with a couple of lamp bases shown on page 55 of Mark Hill's book on Caithness Glass. I have never handled one of these lamp bases so I am just guessing (do they have polished pontil marks?), presumably the colour of yours would be amethyst (page 106).

[chopin-liszt]

It's a quite different shape and colour to the pics on p 55 - and Caithness lamp bases don't have polished pontil marks.
(gettting scared here,  about this after disagreeing with you about fuchsias - but the fuchsias are on newer-than-in-the-records bits!)

[glassobsessed]

Given that the two examples photographed in the book have different heights colours and shapes...

With a polished pontil mark this is unlikely to be Caithness then I guess, the colour is also not like the vase in amethyst shown on page 30. The vase in question appears to have a distinct blue tone to the purple (confusingly like the amethyst swatch shown on page 106).

John

[chopin-liszt]

I reckon the "amethyst swatch" on p 106 is neodynium.
It's also a slightly worrying non-round pontil mark - it has a characteristic gouge often seen on contemporary glass from the far east...

[nigel benson]

Hello,

I'd agree wholeheartedly with Sue on this one and say notCaithness.

The only similarity is the shape of the undercurve coming from the base and meeting rest of the body.

Otherwise the colour is wrong; the top 'half' of the shape clumpy and not graceful as with the O'Broin designs that are being alluded to; and the pontil and base are not familiar to Caithness.

Cheers, Nigel