Glass Message Board
Glass Identification - Post here for all ID requests => Glass => Topic started by: briana5125 on May 17, 2015, 04:22:21 PM
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Pics of second piece ...
Cut glass long dish - wider at one end than the other ?
Georgian???
A real head scratcher.....
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Hi Briana,
I have split this out from your original thread. Having more than one item in an ID request can become confusing if the pieces are by different makers or have differing details.
Also, as with your initial thread for these two items, it would be much easier for people to consider them if the photos were taken against a plain background (perhaps a dark background to show the details).
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Thanks Kevin
I know what you mean about the black background , i will look for something i can use in the future as it is a little hard to make out.
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A large sheet of charcoal or black paper from stationery shop makes a serviceable background. Try oblique lighting rather than full glare which will only bounce of the glass and destroy the contrast.
Assume no markings at all.......... of course, always the possibility this might be Georgian - i.e. C18/early C19 - but the likelihood is small bearing in mind the survival rate of glass that is two hundred years old, or more, when compared to the volume produced since - with more recent material having a progressively higher survival rate the nearer you it approaches the present time.
You say this is a head scratcher - are you suggesting you have searched the literature exhaustively without success, or perhaps just the internet.
As you can appreciate, there have been vast amounts of cut glass produced in the world, over the past 100 years alone, and unlike a lot of pressed material it's less easy to find attributions/provenance, especially in the absence of a backstamp.
There are factors that might help to narrow down period and country, possibly ............. colour, wear, sound when flicked, sharpness of cutting etc., but your description so far is inadequate to make any headway.
Wait to hear from you :)
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Roughly mid 19th century. Widely used in commercial establishments at the time. Although could be bought for home use as well.
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certainly an unusual shape, which suggests a specific use - presumably you've seen them before cagney. Do you know if they had a particular use, and where were you able to locate this information - always interested in sources that provide additional details about table glass :)
In the ordinary course of events, that sort of age, combined with the nature of the piece, should create quite a lot of wear.
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I thought I was replying to the other post concerning the large flint glass goblet. My bad I guess.
As to the boat shaped dish, all I can say is it is a shape common in late 19th c. American pressed glass. Usually termed a pickle dish [ sliced ] vs a pickle castor [ up right container holding pickles whole].
My expertise is early American glass. Alot of which is in the english tradition.
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thanks for the clarification. :) regret I've really little knowledge of States late C19 - early C20 table glass - although it's an area of British glass that does interest me, and am sure you're correct about some patterns/shapes being common to both sides of the pond.
This piece may well have been for sliced pickles as you suggest - as opposed to keeping them in specific pickle jars, which was the method this side of the water.
Pickles, usually, have strong and distinctive odour, and our pickle jars, as you probably know, have ground well-fitting stoppers, unlike a lot of the States examples.
My guestimate of a date for this one - and could be wrong - is some time in the early C20 - had it been earlier, and bearing in mind use, then I would have expected substantial wear. Unfortunately, the original post makes no mention of wear - which is an aspect of table glass that may have bearing on age.
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Hi all
Thanks for all your help , the piece does have quite substantial wear , a few flea bites around the edges and quite a heavy amount of scratching to the base , a lot more that what i usually see on Edwardian glass , the greyish tint and the cutting was making me think Georgian.
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You do not have where you are from on your profile but if its U.S. then Cagney provided the answer as its a common pickle/relish/olive dish made by almost everyone in pressed, cut & blown form for close to a century. Its a utilitarian tableware item therefore you can expect heavy use with signs of significant ware. Attached is one by Sinclaire in blown form & a bit more ornate, still its simply tableware.
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like the wall and lawn Ken ;D you must send some of that sunshine to the U.K. - been the coolest/dullest May in the U.K. for some years. Your pickle is a great piece too and attractive engraving. The op's. example is cut rather than engraved.
appreciate your confirmation of use re the op's dish - still, I'm guessing a less than common shape even for States pickle/relish/olive dish - those that I can find in the books are canoes, oval or rectangular.
Without labouring the point too much, but just to comment on cutting styles and related periods, and reasons why, in my opinion, brian's dish almost certainly isn't as old as he was thinking ...............
U.K. Georgian table glass 1790- 1830, which is the most commonly referred to period, is characterized by relief diamonds, blazes, strawberry diamonds, saw tooth rims, cross cut diamonds and deep mitres, often covering the majority of the surface of the glass.
Mostly because of the lack of these known typical cuts, plus the shape and rather meagre amount of decoration, my opinion suggests this one is much later than the period I've mentioned.
I get the impression from reading some of Jane Spillman's comments that there wasn't a comparable trade in home produced cut glass, in the States, prior to ABP. Your market borrowed English and Irish styles, but home produced cut glass seems to have been insignificant during the early C19 - the answer probably being found in the statistics in Westropp's 'Irish Glass'. He gives details of the truly staggering quantities that were sent from Ireland to the eastern Seaboard, produced possibly with cheap labour, and perhaps your home market found it more economic to import rather than to produce.
So my thoughts are that as this piece lacks similarity to European Georgian glass - appears to have no obvious connection with States American Brilliant Period - it is therefore most likely to be post c. 1915 - but probably State side in view of the shape. Nonetheless one hundred years old, and being utility could easily show the wear as mentioned by brian.
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Yes Paul the U.S. production of cut glass before 1870 was close to virtually non-existant & the only reason we even have the historical ABP dates of 1876-1917 is not us so to speak...its the millions of European immigrants from 1850 through the Civil War into the reconstruction period. It was not an economic issue it was a skilled labor issue. The skilled glass labor force that was needed arrived by ship (I believe led by the Irish & eastern europeans) & supplanted what existed & until that 1876 date we did not have much cut production. It was amazing how large it grew in such a relatively short period of time & 41 years from start to finish is historically pretty puny.
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That's great you guy's , this glass is from Ireland well that's where I live and acquired it anyway.
So we seem to be settling on a Georgian style = (Edwardian) circa 1910???
Thanks so much , I have acquired a lot of antique stem ware and other glass recently and you have been a great help on this one.
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well no, I don't think we can say Georgian style, for the reasons mentioned above. The shape is not from that period, and the cutting has virtually nothing in common either - in fact the cutting is really not of any particular style, but going on the shape and Ken's comments, we might say early C20, and possibly from the States, originally, again in view of Ken's comments re pickle/relish dish.
Sorry these words seem picky, but with non-pressed glass - a lack of backstamp, and minimal cutting, we have problems of nailing something down to a specific period and origin, and it's tempting to imagine it's something we want it to be.
Some early C20 cut glass does have a backstamp - some we can run down in catalogues - but attribution for much of it remains unknown - outside of well known shapes with specific cutting.
Yours might be Irish in origin but you learn that glass travels - sometimes a long way - so not guaranteed just because that is where you found it.
Unfortunately, outside the Georgian period, there's a lack of good books on post c. 1840 cut glass - and when you think how much has been produced, from umpteen countries - it's a difficult area to be certain in.
But learning and finding out is the fun part. :)
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With all do respect I would like to dispel the notion that cut glass production in america was some what negligible pre-1870. Certainly by the 1820's there where at least 10 different glass co. making rich cut glass. Many located in pittsburgh, PA. The first and most prolific being Benjamin Bakewells [ b. 1767 Derby, England ] " PITTSBURGH FLINT GLASS MANUFACTORY " established in 1808.
The War of 1812 [ the second war with England ] and the resulting Embargo Acts, etc. precipitated a large expansion of the domestic glass industry.
The first photo is the earliest documented example of Bakewells cut glass. Presented to President James Madison in 1816.
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Yes looking back I definately should have more clearly stressed a comparison with pre-1870 cut operations to the historical ABP dates of 1876-1917 when stating cut glass before 1870 was close to virtually non-existant. Of course there were early cut operations prior to 1870, however when during the ABP period Spillman's records 77 cut operations working in just the Corning NY area alone & this is just one geographic area in the U.S. where cut operations flourished, well there is no dating comparison necessary when dealing with cut production & existing manufacturers pre-1870 & post 1870. Still I should have more properly recognized those that existed, like the Bakewell cut operation that underwent nine name changes covering a period of 74 years until it closed in 1882.
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I would not confuse " cut operations " with glass companies making actual glass.
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some possible explanation which may clarify our conversations here, regarding the use of words such as 'insignificant' and 'negligible' - is that we may have used these expressions as a result of making comparisons - trying in the process to illustrate the volume of related goods, produced by different countries.
Making comparisons, in most matters, is a simple and effective way of illustrating differences between them, and these can usually be understood by most people - even me.
My first hand knowledge of eastern States cut glass production is meagre to say the least, and as usual I relied heavily on Spillman's comments - and in view of the lady's expertise - would ordinarily have believed them to be reliable when speaking of overall cut glass production in the States in the first half of the C19.
There is no doubt that when making comparisons of the volume of manufactured glass, plus the massive export figures detailed by Westropp, for the period in question, that there is a 'significant' difference between States home grown quantity and that produced in northern Europe during this period.
I wouldn't pretend to be in the same league as cagney or Ken in terms of knowledge of C19 States cut glass - but am prepared to believe that volume differences between the two countries, during our period, were 'significant'. ;)
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I would not confuse " cut operations " with glass companies making actual glass.
Farrar & Spillman do not use any clarifying statetments whatsoever regarding the number of existing cut operations in the Corning area being designated as those who soley (a) originally did the pours & (b) then cut the the original blank they poured. Numerous operations cut blanks originally poured by other companies & furthermore no "cut" reference nor "cut" author I am aware of has ever even hinted that one must qualify as "a glass company making actual glass" to be regarded as a cut operation. Surely you are aware that many cut operations cut blanks they did not pour. There is no confusion here just as there has absolutely never been any existing standard that to be a "cut" operation one must produce the glass blank they cut.