Glass Identification - Post here for all ID requests > Glass

Ruby Glass?

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Ivo:
If the question is "I have a red dish could it be ruby glass"  then I assume it refers to the rare and expensive gold ruby, not just any red glass. But the chances are slim that it is, in fact, gold ruby - so we need a photograph for verification.  You're the technician - for you ruby is a colour.  For other people it is the stuff that ancient myths and fables are made of....  am I making sense?

Adam:
Not being a collector or dealer, the word "cranberry" was new to me when I began to take an interest in what you folks were up to - years after I left the industry.  Although I have never made a gold ruby myself I always knew what they looked like and this I now know to be synonymous with cranberry.

I made a lot of selenium ruby (at least that's what the industry called it). As generally produced it was the colour of vehicle rear lights although, being a "struck" colour it can fade off to straw around the edges - a property put to good use by some of the art glass makers.

People one generation earlier than me were full of stories about their own immediate ancestors watching the factory owner arriving when a pot of gold ruby-to-be was at the right condition and producing one or two gold sovereigns to throw in the pot.  That sounds technically horrible to me - there are (and probably always were) plenty of gold compounds which would mix much better but who am I to challenge old wives' tales when, in the medical field at least, so many are being proved correct now!!

Adam D.

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