Topic: Repair to champagne glass?

[bat20]

Hi all,i've been lucky with finding these star cut type glasses in so much as i 've found them in groups,this time five of them and i'm guessing late Victorian/Edwardian with polished pontils and heavier than you think their going to be with a nice ring,but what 's more interesting to me is that one is shorter than the others with what i thought at first was an interesting knop,on closer inspection it slowly began to dawn on me that infact it had been repaired so i would think much loved to go to that effort..who would the previous owner have gone to for such a repair i ask myself?any thoughts many thanks

[bat20]

The third

[brucebanner]

My Granddad is 95 and still repairing useless bits of things like a 1950's iron that blew the fuses in his flat, i have a lovely collection of repaired glass i packed away before Christmas, it's a great way of getting period pieces for a fraction of the cost, were a throw away culture, my Granddad has over 48 yakult pots he just won't throw away because there usefull, here is an early jug with a rivet in the handle i water the plants with.

I bet others on here have some real beautiful repaired glass.

[flying free]

I have some beautiful un-repaired  (damaged) glass  - cannot resist an old piece of glass that's pretty and rare, even if damaged.  I always feel I have to 'save' them for posterity (or comparison research etc).
I have lots of other things non glass  that I do repair though - I love 'second hand' (I've just hand made a blind for the bathroom from an old linen pillowcase  )
m

[bat20]

A good friend of mine lived to 102,was comfortably off and repaired everything no matter how seemingly unimportant it appeared to everyone else,to her these objects meant alot and any damage didn't effect that bond.Would the repair to my glass have been done by a glass factory,i would think both ends would have to be heated and then pushed together,or could you do it with say a plumbers blow torch

[Ivo]

It is still usual in France to have glasses with damaged rims re-cut - just like you have your flatware re-silvered every 10 years or so.

[chopin-liszt]

It was Michael's 94 year old Dad's repairs to pots and pans that worried me a little bit.
String is inflammable, possibly not the best material to have used.

You always knew where my Dad had been, there was a trail of Evo-stick, oozing out of joints of things... 

I've just "relegated" a large Mdina cylinder vase to "waste-paper bin".
It's got a big burst bubble inside, and I recently found a much nicer example.

None of these sorts of things are on the scale of the effort made to repair old glass; I find the drilling and staples absolutely fascinating, and have a stapled repaired purple and white slag glass jug in the shape of a fish, just to have an example of such a wonderful repair for my collection.

[neil53]

Hi, there are a number of glass restorers around used by the trade and collectors alike.  Repairing a stem such as the one you show normally requires grinding both edges (bowl and stem) on a flat wheel to get a good contact surface and then using special glues to effect the repair.  The repair is always a straight line for this reason.  Dealers and collectors of early glass are always wary of such straight lines in a glass as a glass blower rearely leaves a straight line, and it almost always means a repair has been made at some time.  There was a glass at a major auction house recently where a very expensive heavy baluster wine glass from the Georgian period had had a new foot put on, presumably to replace a cracked old one  - the immediate giveaway being the straight line join.  A picture of a similar repair on an opaque twist glass is shown below.

Contact me if you would like a referral to an excellent restorer.

Neil

[oldglassman]

Hi ,
            The repair to the champagne glass above is a hot weld, both ends of the broken stem are heated then pushed together and given a twist to stick them together , there is a thread somewhere were this was discussed with other examples of the technique shown .

cheers ,
                Peter.

[bat20]

Thanks for the replies,i like the hot weld repair it's not trying to hide anything and at the same time i don't think it lessens the piece,infact if anything it adds to the character and history.I've noticed some stress marks to the repaired glass the others don;t have, maybe hinting at both pieces have to be fully heated up to stop cracking?