Glass Message Board
Glass Identification - Post here for all ID requests => Glass => Topic started by: essi on April 14, 2025, 06:19:46 PM
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A recent purchase that caught my eye. Don't know quite what to say about this vase. The outer surface is covered with what seems like a fine raised texture.
it has a height of 162mm and is 152mm at the top.
Any comments gratefully accepted.
Tim
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Does it bite? :) (apologies 8) )
It does not look quite like Matthey crinkles does it?
I wonder if the effect could have been produced by a technique that was used in the Wedgwood lustred enamel ceramic wares known as "souffle" in the early parts of the 20th century
The very finely powdered enamel was "puffed" through a muslin cloth onto the surface, to give a dispersed effect to the colours when subsequently heated.
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Thanks for the reply Sue. Are the Mathey crinkles the same the small tumblers my family had back in the 60s and seventies with maybe half the surface covered with textured surface?
Looking online there was a French vase with similar finish described as sugar frosted :).
Under close inspection the texture seems to very small particles of glass stuck to a clear body.
I will keep looking.
Tim
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Yes. Those horrible feeling squash glasses. ;D
Through muslin puffing of powder would produce the effect you have. I'm not getting much off the web, I know about this because I have the Wedgwood Fairyland Lustre book, and it was in the days of Daisy Machaig-Jones starting up with Fairyland that she encountered this way of applying the enamel background.
You'll find the texture on the dragon bowls that slightly pre-empted Fairyland.
As you can imagine, the melting powder might well run on a ceramic item when in the oven, but I don't think it's neccessarily going to do that on another glass surface.
It's the only way I can think of that your sort of much smaller and smoother than the sugar crystal sharp bits of the crinkles, could have been applied successfully.
https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1338710398/blue-fruit-lustre-bowl-wedgwood-designed?ref=sold_out-7&frs=1&logging_key=1f13266ca512ed5e0c25b5c837cf00ba934d7206%3A1338710398
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Found this.https://www.hogelandshoeve.be/pix295/cristalor1s.jpg
Just need to find a manufacturer now......
Tim
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Sometimes called 'Sugar glass', the distinctive texture was created using a technique of glass enamels called 'Crinkles' which was patented by the Johnson Matthey company in 1938. It was probably also used by Kristalunie Maastricht to produce the Oranje-appel vaas by W.J.Rozendaal in the same year. After the war it was sold to glass factories under license in various countries, including Chance Glass (UK).
After the war, (and Kristalunie's decision to abandon the product), de Rupel produced these colourful textured glasses in large quantities. They are an iconic element of 1950's table glass.
The individual layers for crinkles and gilding were applied by hand, and although most Boom glasses seem to have four glided bands at the top. The glasses were made in a wide range of colours, which were probably selected 'to order' according to the wishes of wholesale buyers. Design and colour choices were to some extent also left to the individual decorators.
Tim
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Could your vase be the "scavo" technique? There are some posts on here about Murano makers but also Lafiore, Mallorca.
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The crystalex vase looks like Matthey crinkles - and is on exactly the right sort of item, but melted a bit more than the "sharp sugar-like" stuff that was on the squash glasses and hyacinth vases.
So if that is the same as your vase, I imagine it would be "well-melted" Matthey Crinkles after all.
Nev, Scavo is a very complicated and dangerous technique used to make glass appear old and having been buried for centuries.
Although there are modern, safer ways of producing a similar appearance used by companies such as LaFiore and it still seems to be called scavo.
I'm not getting the sort of detailed description of the technique I'd like to find, but I have found this discussion about trying to do it, with loads of warnings, on a forum of beadmakers.
http://www.lampworketc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9579
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Sue, Leslie Pina's Italian Glass book defines scavo as "Surface covered with half melted glass powders mixed with sand", so apparently a fairly simple process. There are lots of Lafiore "scavo" pieces on Ebay.
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But not made in the old-fashioned way, using dangerous chemicals.
The difference is kind of like the difference between oils and acrylics. :)
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Essi's vse isn't scavo and to me appears to use a technique similar to or the same as Mathey Crinkles
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Too uniform a pattern to be overshot I reckon.
John
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I do agree complletely with the last two comments, but if the overshot got overheated and melted a bit more than it was supposed to, it might go smoother and blobby like this.
But it would have had to be a fairly sparse coating of the overshot... :-\