Topic: Decanters "Tie Number" / "Tie Letter" Is this the correct name?

[Bernard C]

Help please, preferably internationally.

For as long as I can remember I have used the terms Tie Numbers and Tie Letters to describe the small engraved marks applied to the stopper and rim of the decanter to ensure that the two stay together after grinding in.

While the term is quite plausible and easily understood, as the marks tie that stopper to that particular decanter, I cannot find my source, and am concerned that I could be propagating an incorrect term.   In particular the term is not in Haanstra, Ivo, Glass fact file a–z, Miller's, 2001, where I would expect to find it.

What do you call these engraved marks?   ... and do you have a source for this?   Quite obviously there may be more than one term, possibly country-, region-, town-, or even glassworks-specific.

Bernard C. 

[nigel benson]

Bernard,

Whilst I quite like the term you are using for the numbers used on stoppers and decanters, I cannot say that I've ever heard of its use prior to this thread and your use of it in another, where you describe the UK versus continental digits.

Nigel

[krsilber]

Neither have I in the US.  I thought it must be a UK thing when I saw you use it.  Could it be a term you picked up somewhere that was used by a particular glassmaker?

And thanks for the description of the different numerals!  Very enlightening.

[Ivo]

it is absent from the a-z book because there I have found no reference to it in literature & never heard the term before.

[Frank]

Well Bernard, as no one has come up with an alternative or ratification - yet the term has not been disapproved... let us vote for adopting it. We have enough writers here to start propagating the term! It might be worth checking first with Decanterman, Andy, to see if he came across this or another term before.

[johnphilip]

I Heard or read somewere that stoppering was a specific job, the stopperer or stopper man would spend most of his day grinding in polishing and numbering each stopper to its decanter.Not the most exciting job.

[nigel benson]

Hello,

There is no reference to the term in The Decanter, by McConnell that I could find.

As for the numbering in the first place there is no proof as to how it came about. Yes , you are quite right about stoppers being made at a seperate place to the maker of the bottle and then being ground and polished to fit, John. However, to date there is no proof about how the practice of numbering came about.

Whilst logically one would expect the decanter base and the stopper to be numbered to match as a part of the fitting process, originally this did not take place.

There are also theories that it began when butlers wanted to be sure that the correct stopper matched its base, as well as other theories. In the twentieth century it most surely became part of the manufacturing process, however at what prior point this became common practice is debatable.

Maybe its my conservative nature, but I hesitate to introduce a new term - perhaps its a just case of me thinking "We are not worthy", now all I've got to do is remember where I referenced that quote from. Life of Brian, maybe?

Nigel

[aa]

Seems very logical. Numbering systems are generally named ...as in Dewey Decimal.....so perhaps this should be known as the Cavalot Code?

[krsilber]

I just ran across a term for "tie number" in the glossary of Wilson's American Glass 1760-1930:  match mark.

[Frank]

I like "Match Mark" as it covers numbers, letters and symbols too. Also it is less ambiguous than "Tie".