Glass Message Board
Glass Identification - Post here for all ID requests => Glass Paperweights => Topic started by: tropdevin on June 28, 2008, 09:22:24 PM
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This weight (http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?type=2&campid=5335820906&toolid=10001&customid=&ext=220251349189&item=220251349189) is very neat - and quite attractive - but I suspect it is Strathearn. Any other views?
Alan
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It looks like Perthshire to me. Some of their earlier weight had that fire polished bottom and were unsigned. Strathearn's canes look pinched at the top. These canes show very little distortion and that latticino looks as neat as what you find in Peter McDougall's weights.
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I would agree with Alan. Strathearn, in their traditional design, but better quality than most. The canes are more regular than the normal strathearn but they do have a lack of roundness towards the centre of the weight.
Perthshire weights tend to have a far more regular cane shape. I think the difference is partly due to the way the canes were cut. With Strathearn they were snipped. At Perthshire they were cut with a circular saw (on a machine like a bacon slicer)
Alternatively - "transition weight" (that well known category for anything not obviously attributable!!)
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There has to be some transition from Strathearn to Perthshire as everyone at Perthshire just walked over to the new company from the old. Interesting about the snipping versus cutting, how was the snipping done without cracking?
One of the reasons Paul Ysart's kids did not follow their father was that he made them cut the canes and Salvador (son of Paul) told me that they loathed it because they would always cut their fingers, nevertheless he is proud of his collection of his families work. I have a VHS tape of his collection, and probably some of Catherine's collection if anyone is able to convert that to an mpeg I will happily send it to them. The video would then be offered for free download from one of the Scottish sites. 20 plus years old don't expect good quality - the hired camera was massive and primitive.
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Interesting about the snipping versus cutting, how was the snipping done without cracking?
When I did the Willie Manson course, canes were cut using a pair of pincers which would quite neatly snap off a quarter inch lenght of cane for setting. It was difficult to be accurate and cut them all to the same length and at right angles. I assume that is how they did them at Stathearn
As mentioned above, on a visit to Perthshire I watched someone use the bacon slicer to cut down a cane. Every piece would have a smooth straight edge and be identical in length
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I think the eBay seller has done the right thing by adding "?" to the Perthshire attribution in the title.
In my web pages, I show a neatly set spoke weight (http://www.btinternet.com/~kevh.glass/pages/vas-strath/weight15.htm) which I classed as Strathearn but with reservations because of the tidiness and the 1-1-2-2 cane pattern.
Although I cannot locate the email right now, a collector in Europe sent me a photo of an extremely similar weight to mine, with the same pattern and much the same quality of canes etc. But his had a Perthshire Paperweights label. (Ok, in theory, the label may have been added to a Strathearn weight in error, after falling off the correct item, or it could even have been added, at any time before the current owner received it, as a deliberate attempt to mislead.)
But assuming the label was added at the time of making the weight, it confirms use of canes that, to me, look very much like Strathearn but in a Perthshire weight. I have always felt (even without absolute proof) that many of the early Perthshire weights would have been made with Strathearn canes (or even early Vasart [and maybe even earlier Ysart] canes, too!).
For the eBay one my first thought was "unsigned Perthshire", mainly because of its tidiness set off by those very neat and straight filigree twists - a feature not often seen with Stathearn twists when set in the weight.