For many years there has been a discussion of spatter decors in Czech glass. A commonly used term derived from a misconception at some point, is "End of the Day Glass", a term indicating that spatter decors were the result of remnant shards from the day's production being used to make pieces with spatter decors. This term, and the concept behind it, are a myth..... Spatter decors are, in reality, predetermined colors of glass. In all likelihood, production records if available, would likely indicate there were formulas for these spatters.
It is believed that much of the raw color rods of glass for the industry were procured from Josef Riedel. Catalogs of their color sample books indicate that they offered in excess of 500 colors. Each of these colors had a specific cost, a specific name and a specific stock number. The fact that spatter decors found, although at times varying a little in percentages of the colors, seem at least in the Welz production I have identified, to carry the same mixtures or formulas from production run to production run. It is these color combinations, developed out of hundreds of color possibilities, that lead me away from thinking that a single spatter type decor, determined by the color combination, would be produced by multiple houses..... unless of course they shared formulas amongst each other.... a possibility that does not seem very likely to me.
I used to think that spatter decors were far too random to be of any value making attribution determinations.... I am no longer of that belief, although any study of the concept is certainly in it's infancy as far as I am concerned. Where it is still likely possible that many production houses may never be identified, I think that it is possible to find pieces from a common unknown house, and possibly even develop an idea of who that house is at some later point in time.
As a bi-product of my research into the production of Welz for the last 7 years or so, I have observed some very distinct "spatter" decors using interesting combinations of colors. As I continued to study their production in an attempt to identify more shapes, hopefully unique ones that I could use to link production I started to observe some characteristics which I am sure would apply in many ways to almost all spatter decors.
The observation is that although these appear at a glance to be random decors, a study of groups of these decors when assembled indicates that there were in fact, in at least for Welz production, distinct color combinations or formulas used to determine the spatter decor which would be visible. In some cases, the exterior colors for the spatter decor were the same, but a different interior lining would be used which would alter the visible end result of a piece. Same shards, different lining.... different end result visually......
Another thing I noticed in my studies of these decors, on what I believe to be Welz production, is that the shards of color in many cases appear to be like small random pieces of torn paper. Some large, some small, the a little bit of a distinct pattern than I see on other spatter decors in my collection of Czech glass.
It is as a result of this kind of "torn" look to some pieces that I refer to this style of spatter in my own research work regarding Welz, as "Decoupage" spatter, as it reminds me of the crafting hobby. The first three images are of different shapes assembled in a common decor. Obviously the third combination is less frequently found. I have quite a few other groups..... Much of this glass came from the UK, and it is also my belief that the UK was a target market for Welz with this style of production. The last image is of Deco Era production, and is shown for the purpose of clearly showing the style of "torn" spatter pieces I am referring to.
I feel that through the visual identification of "formulas" (color combinations) that shapes can be linked to a common house.
A work in progress, but I thought something worth sharing....
Topic: A look at Spatter Decors..... (Read 565 times)
