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Glass Identification - Post here for all ID requests => Glass => Topic started by: Paul S. on March 19, 2018, 07:09:15 PM
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Pieces with similar style of surface decoration appear also to be known variously as random threaded/peloton/crackle/relief textured.
A small jug - 3.5" in height - blown and not moulded, though I've no idea how the 'Kralik' type decor is applied. Very neat and well finished polished pontil depression, and in certain light a beautiful all over surface iridescence, though not easy to pick that up with the camera. Might this be achieved in the same way as the carnival method - salts thrown into a muffle kiln?.
Considerable wear on the underside, and much dirt where the handle joins the body, so am tempted to suggest first third of C20 - though that's speculation - it might possibly be earlier. Was this decorative style at it's height 1890 to 1920, or was it used for longer perhaps.
The rim shows lines running around the piece indicating a tool was used to 'round' that part of the jug.
The decoration is possibly best known on central European art glass, though it does appear on some British pieces c. 1880 - none of which is my area at all.
Probably a non starter for locating maker - it might have come from anywhere, but for a humble jug (milk or cream) it has been given a more impressive appearance than might be expected, where many similar shaped pieces are pressed - so would settle for a suggestion of date. :)
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not Peloton - that has small threads (often multi coloured) embedded in the surface (iirc)
not threaded either I don't believe.
It could be called 'relief decorated' as a simple description but I think in reality it is :
crackle glass,made again iirc by dipping in cool water?? so it crackles and then blowing out again to enlarge the crackle.
The surface finish iirc may be dependent on whether it is reheated (so the surface crackle is 'soft'), or not which would leave the crackle fairly rough. I think... open to correction from a glassmaker or anyone else.
I am not sure which British maker used this technique - Apsley Pellatt did say in his book he made a form of crackle glass though but that was c.1840s and I think a different type of crackle. Too late to go and look in the book at the moment.
I think it's most likely to be a Bohemian maker (but that's just me).
I think there was a long standing discussion on Loetz using this technique and somewhere there are some larger crackle water jugs with angled handles that iirc were made by Loetz??
Kralik did make crackle glass as well.
Also another maker (cannot remember name for the life of me - maybe S. Reich & Co ?) who made lampshades, also did crackle glass. I put some info on the board somewhere relating to 'crackle glass lampshade' title or similar.
All open to correction :)
m
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well, not from me ;D - not really my area m, and to be honest I didn't expect replies. As you've described, this finish is open to some interpretation - the piece itself might have been from one of many sources - and even date wise there might be much speculation.
So, we'll put it down to simply being interesting and presently with unknown provenance/age/decoration - though with the passing of time who knows, someone might come up with the answer. thanks again:-)
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Bohemian is the easy option, covers a wide swathe of possibilities. ;D
I thought this iridescent jug more likely Kralik rather than Loetz, something about the overall finish but the design is a bit special.
John
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Flying Free, the jug i think you are referring to is the jug made by Loetz and also made my Ludvika Smrckova for Antonin Ruckl. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/48/65/00/486500a38c03486b4cf764d31a52ea08.jpg
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John - is your jug a blown piece, with ground/polished pontil depression? Very attractive, and does incline me to think mine might be from the same country source, if nothing else - I like the bird impression. :) Is yours bigger than mine? ;D
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It was but in this case ground and not polished - not unusual with Kralik.
Bigger too, five or six inches. :-X
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There was considerable discussion ages ago about jugs with this crackle finish which had handles created by making a hole in the body of the vessel and shaping it accordingly.
There was some talk of them being Moser, but I think there was a superior and an inferior manufacturer of similar items and nobody really got to any end decisions.
I have one. It is the inferior kind. (It's currently too grumpy to smile for the camera, but I'll get it later)
Your birdie jug is constructed in a similar birdie fashion to Christine's Loetz Chicken jug, John.
(not the whole thing, just the birdieness)
When I say ages ago, I mean "probably before some folk here were born".
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I think Harrach also did animal/bird type pieces as well but yes, as Sue said, the first thing I thought of was Christine's Loetz set with the bird.
Tiger yes :) thanks that is the jug to which I was referring.
m
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I wouldn't dream of commenting on a maker for these pieces, but would humbly suggest this decorative effect has nothing to do with crackle/ice glass, where the hot and partly blown piece is immersed momentarily in water to create the cracks, and then further blown before it all falls apart.
I still see much crackle glass in charity shops, and there is a similarity of appearance with almost all of it - a multitude of very fine random fissures.
Certainly my small jug and probably John's too, have a surface decoration possibly best described as applied relief random threading - possibly marvered into the surface - but definitely unlike crackle glass. Nothing to do with overshot either, which sometimes had me confused with ice glass.
But I'll settle for Bohemian ;)
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Could it be Stevens and Williams Fibrilose?. i can not seem to find hardly any though only a couple of links on here to green trailed ones. I'm starting to see and find a lot of local stourbridge designs that have colour and also made in clear.
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not a clue Chris - I've never before hear the word Fibrillose, but having now looked in the Williams-Thomas book 'The Crystal Years', I'm inclined to think not - but I stand to be corrected.
Quoting from the above, and for those who don't have the volume, the description for Fibrillose reads .............."In 1901 J.S. Williams with John Northwood I developed this interesting glass making technique, where crystal fancy pieces, mainly vases and articles for mounting, such as decanters and champagne jugs etc., in their malleable stage had applied to them trailed veins of dark green glass as diagonals. From those main threads thinner shoots came, vertically up and down, to produce a rough herringbone effect."
Perhaps others might have some thoughts on your suggestion.
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.. probably John's too, have a surface decoration possibly best described as applied relief random threading - possibly marvered into the surface - but definitely unlike crackle glass.
Mine is 100% crackle glass Paul, not a shadow of doubt for me. Definitely not trailed and marvered. Christine's Loetz jug was on my mind when I bought mine and the first thing I compared it to when home.
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thanks John - mine looks to have the same surface appearance as yours, and contrary to my earlier waffle the lines are incised in appearance and not in relief. But what has confused me is the array of commonly found glass (vases usually), often in uranium, and with a quality polished pontil depression and covered in masses of fine random fissured cracks - and it's that form that I'd always assumed was crackle glass. Can't now find my pix, but I had lots of this stuff once - Christine will know the type of glass that I'm referring to - though we don't seem to get much of it on the Board these days.
Of course both types may well correctly be described as crackle glass.
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Ours have been heated and blown further after crackling than the type I think you mean. The more heat and working the less well defined the crackle will be.
Monart Cloisonne looks like crackle, the crizzled bits of Mdina are crackle, Loetz Mimosa is a crackle. There must be more, a relatively simple way of adding some decoration I guess.
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thanks John - showing my ignorance again I think.
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Paul said:
thanks John - mine looks to have the same surface appearance as yours, and contrary to my earlier waffle the lines are incised in appearance and not in relief.
Ah! whenever I look at Paul's photos of the jug, my brain tells me the lines are in relief. ??? And that is my first reaction to any photo of a "craclke glass" item where the crackle is minimal and the further blowing is "sizeable".
I think images of (likely) crackle glass items should include a close up of an area along an "edge" that clearly shows whether the "trails" are incised or relief. ;D
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thanks Kevin - looking too briefly at images is a dangerous thing, and doing just that was the cause of my mis-reading the decoration on my jug and thinking the lines were in relief - but they're not - though even then I still had doubts it was crackle glass - but now I've been put right ;D
Being more than a tad ignorant of this kind of material and how its appearance is formed, I had assumed that 'crackle' glass would always appear as a mass of very fine closed fissures - but Mr. Thickie had overlooked the obvious - which is that this particular process involves two gathers. Whilst this second gather is around white heat, it's plunged into water very briefly and it's this second gather only that fractures when immersed in water - certainly the cracks don't penetrate the entire thickness of the glass. The piece is then further blown to enlarge the item, during which process the fissures expand giving the appearance of incised channels on the surface, though incised is probably the wrong word, and that should be reserved for lines created when something is cold - neither do I like trails - sounds as though we're going on a National Trust walk. ;D
A much better explanation of the process of making 'frosted/crackle/ice glass' is to be found in Charles Hajdamach's 'British Glass 1800 - 1914 p. 265.
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Quote:
'It could be called 'relief decorated' as a simple description but I think in reality it is :
crackle glass,made again iirc by dipping in cool water?? so it crackles and then blowing out again to enlarge the crackle.
The surface finish iirc may be dependent on whether it is reheated (so the surface crackle is 'soft'), or not which would leave the crackle fairly rough. I think... open to correction from a glassmaker or anyone else.'
Depending on whether it is blown out further and how much,will determine how wide the crackles are.
It's not Stevens and Williams Fibrillose.
It's an optical illusion that it appears to have 'threads' on it, and indeed that is what I first thought and thought I perceived, on my Kralik crackle glass box.
But it's not threaded or relief decorated (in the sense of having something applied to the surface). That is an illusion.
It is made by dipping and sometimes blowing out further.
My box is on here somewhere with I recall, a fairly long thread discussion.
can't find the box but here is an example of layered crackle glass with an internal crackle layer which has been cased in smooth glass
https://www.glassmessages.com/index.php/topic,61027.msg344128.html#msg344128
Crackle glass appears in many formats.
m
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Whilst searching the Board's archive for those uranium crackle vases I mentioned earlier, I found another thread regarding two pieces that show how hot glass, dipped momentarily in water then cracks - only to be expected of course. I'd forgotten about these pieces, but in my ignorance I'd assumed they're good examples of crackle that appear not to have been further enlarged/blown, sine the cracks/fissures remain within the glass, and do not form a surface feature as with the jugs shown here. :)
https://www.glassmessages.com/index.php/topic,40594.msg224854.html#msg224854
thanks m.
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Sometimes crackle like that can feel quite sharp to the touch, perhaps items need to be thicker walled for that though, this little glass feels pretty smooth.
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not Peloton - that has small threads (often multi coloured) embedded in the surface (iirc)
not threaded either I don't believe.
It could be called 'relief decorated' as a simple description but I think in reality it is :
crackle glass,made again iirc by dipping in cool water?? so it crackles and then blowing out again to enlarge the crackle.
The surface finish iirc may be dependent on whether it is reheated (so the surface crackle is 'soft'), or not which would leave the crackle fairly rough. I think... open to correction from a glassmaker or anyone else.
I am not sure which British maker used this technique - Apsley Pellatt did say in his book he made a form of crackle glass though but that was c.1840s and I think a different type of crackle. Too late to go and look in the book at the moment.
I think it's most likely to be a Bohemian maker (but that's just me).
I think there was a long standing discussion on Loetz using this technique and somewhere there are some larger crackle water jugs with angled handles that iirc were made by Loetz??
Kralik did make crackle glass as well.
Also another maker (cannot remember name for the life of me - maybe S. Reich & Co ?) who made lampshades, also did crackle glass. I put some info on the board somewhere relating to 'crackle glass lampshade' title or similar.
All open to correction :)
m
Perhaps a correction to the date that Pellatt produced the crackle glass? His book was produced in 1849.
This Dictionary of the Arts, Manufactures and Mines by Andrew Ure, this version dated 1864 apparently states Pellatt produced crackle glass in 1851 - see page 565.
https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/A_Dictionary_of_Arts_Manufactures_and_Mi/MkbuUqWHDVkC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=a+dictionary+of+arts+manufactures+and+mines+1842&pg=PA997&printsec=frontcover
It's very specific on the date of 1851.