Part 2

The glass collector exercises his sight and applies the test; it enables him to detect a counterfeit, though in shape and general appearance it imitates the genuine antique; it is too whitely crystal, too tintless to be old. Curio-shop windows at Brighton, for instance, are full of frauds in glass, chiefly cut-glass, or glass moulded to resemble cut-glass; but the chalky-white tint betrays and condemns them, and the instructed collector will not be taken in. Also he will recognize genuine Waterford glass by its own tinge of colour, and genuine Cork glass in a similar way; he will see that old Dutch-made glass, when thick, has a smeary, milk-and-watery tint, and when thin has a flashy, meretricious absence of deep tinting: he will learn that old Stourbridge glass was whiter than antique Bristol or Newcastle glass, and sometimes was milky-white; in course of time and practice he will come to be able to “date” and “place” a piece of old glass at sight, as well as instantly to reject a fraud.

_The tints of Irish-made glass._ Glass made at Waterford, late in the eighteenth century and early in the nineteenth, was a fine product, often exquisitely cut: it is distinguishable in more than one way, but has a characteristic tinge which, once seen, is unmistakable. I cannot find exact words for it, it is not a blue nor a green nor a blackish tint, but is something of all three, and was due to excessive presence of oxide of lead. Nobody has done any research as to Irish-made glass, and people suppose that Cork-made glass resembled the Waterford glass, but that is very unlikely, because each factory mixed according to its own recipe, and also used a different variety of each of the raw materials common to all glass. In point of fact, Cork glass is “duller” than Waterford, and it has quite a different, a pale, almost dun or yellowish, tinge, particularly visible in the thicker parts; a good many lustre-ornaments seem to have been made at Cork. Belfast glass was yellowish, too, if we may judge by the tint of Williamite glasses.

2. THE SOUND OF OLD GLASS

Perhaps because more lead was used in the “metal” or raw material, but at any rate for some distinctive reason, _old English and Irish-made glass has a more musical sound than any made abroad_. Flick or flip with your finger-nail, or pinch near your ear, a piece of this old ware, and _a vibrant, resonant, and lingering ring is audible_. The thinner the part of the glass you flick the more the sound, of course; but something of a ring should come from almost any part of the article. Another way of producing this characteristic sound is to keep on rubbing a wetted finger around the edge of the bowl of a wine glass or finger bowl, till rhythmic vibration is set up, and the sound steals forth. And it is a _bell-like, musical note_, almost the F sharp or G sharp, or A or B of the 4th octave in a pianoforte keyboard: darkish glass with this resonance is almost sure to be old English or Irish made. Much eighteenth-century Dutch glass is still extant here, and is often mistaken for English; but it need not be: thin or thick, _Dutch glass sends out no lingering resonance_, long, clear, musical, and true. _Dutch glass tinkles_ when you flip it, but the sound is dead a few seconds after being born. The sound test for old English or Irish glass is, Does it ring with a musical note that throbs, sings, and lingers in a way to delight the ear? _The sound of old Dutch, French, Italian, or German glass is cracked, so to speak_, though the vessel itself is not; but

_O hark, O hear! how thin and clear, And thinner, clearer, farther going!_

are lines which Tennyson might have written to describe the music of old English and Irish glass; too much stress cannot be laid upon this test--the _lasting_ note is the criterion.

So that now, with both tint and sound to guide us, we need not be taken in by modern copies or old Dutch glass.

3. THE QUALITY OF OLD GLASS METAL

Italians and Frenchmen came to England in the sixteenth century to teach the art and mystery of glass-making to our islanders; yet neither old Italian nor French glass metal has the _quality_ of old English and Irish glass metal. The glassware made here between the reigns of Queen Anne and Queen Victoria had the best _quality_ of any glass ever made in the world. But what is _quality_ in this connexion? It means material, but it also means the manipulation of material and the effect produced. The glass made during the reigns of the four Georges was called “flint glass” and “lead glass”--misnomers, perhaps, but I need not take up space here in discussing that; the important point is that the _quality_ of the metal and the skill of the manipulation resulted in thinness, rigidity, shapeliness, a velvety surface, dark sheen, brilliancy, radiancy of facets when cut, and the vibrant, musical ring of the eighteenth-century glass. Glass made under Charles II was not so dark, and Victorian glass was whiter; Victorian and modern English glass is of excellent quality, but is uniform to almost a painful degree. It lacks character and diversity; the Georgian glass was individual and original, so to speak. There were faults in it--little air-blobs, or vesicles, that feel like pimples on the surface, or show as bubbles within it; striations, like lines of fibre, also; and deviations from the strict mathematic line or curve, which were due to hand-work. But if you examine contemporary Dutch-made, French-made, or Italian-made glass, you notice that the same defects exist, and more numerously, while there is a flimsiness, or a lumpiness, or a smeary look and harsh feel which are absent from old English and Irish glass.

A specked, pimply surface, and a dull thickness and clumsy lumpiness or flashy thin lightness, are found in old Dutch-made glass; and this, taken in conjunction with the absence of true ring, enables a collector to reject the old ware sent over from Holland. _The quality of the English and Irish glass metal comes out in the surface_, too, a little; the fingers feel the surface of an old blown wine glass to be _cool_, _smooth_, _hard_, _and yet velvety_; while the surface of Waterford cut-glass has a _silky feel_.

4. THE WEIGHT OF OLD GLASS

In his privately circulated book on “English Baluster Stemmed Glasses of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries” Mr. Francis Buckley aptly says that “English-made glasses of the first period were all light in weight and cloudy in appearance. Some time between the Restoration and the end of the seventeenth century, but when precisely it is difficult to say, the English glass-makers began to try experiments with a view to removing from their glasses this dull and cloudy appearance. Their object was to produce a substance like crystal; and this object they eventually achieved by introducing into their metal a large quantity of lead.” This gave the characteristic weight.

The old Dutch glass seems light in weight, even when it is thick; _old English and Irish glass seems relatively heavy_ even when it is thin. _Waterford glass is especially heavy._ These differences in weight are probably due to differences in the materials used for mixing the metal; but whatever the cause, they aid the collector to know the real from the counterfeit, and the old English from the Dutch. Even the thick, clumsy glasses made here in the reign of William and Mary seem more weighty than those otherwise exactly similar which were then brought over from Holland.

5. THE SIGNS OF USE AND WEAR

Many fantastic pieces of old glass were made as curiosities or ornaments, but most old glass was made for use. Glass is easily scratched; as the wine glasses and decanters were set down upon the hard, polished mahogany of dinner-tables, after the cloth was drawn, and were moved, the feet of the wine glasses and the bases of the decanters become scratched thereby. Lustre-ornaments, glass candlesticks, or glass vases which stood upon marble or hard wood mantelpieces, being moved when maidservants were dusting, became scratched at the base. The collector will therefore carefully examine those parts of a piece of glass which, if it is old, may be expected to show the signs of use and wear caused by contact and movement upon hard surfaces; it is well to do this by the aid of a pocket-lens--which ought to be a glass collector’s constant companion.

_In a genuine old piece the scratches are numerous, do not all run the same way, and are dust-coloured, more or less._ Most counterfeits show no scratches at all, but _the more elaborate forgeries show artificial scratches; these usually run all one way, however, or seem all to have been made together at the same time, and sometimes these artificial scratchings appear in parts of the glass which would not be exposed to marking of the kind when in use_, as, for instance, inside the bowls.

Yet it is not wise to condemn and refuse as a fraud a piece of glass which shows the other four or five general evidences of genuineness simply because only slight scratching is evident; for the glass may have been standing in a cupboard unused for many years, its nose put out of joint by some change of fashion in table-ware soon after it had been bought, and have passed into a collector’s cabinet before coming into your hands for examination. Nor is it safe to suppose that the more the scratches the older the piece; it may have had more than the common amount of usage. If the glass has a “folded foot” or a “ring-base” to stand on, the scratches will be at the very edge of the foot, or on the ring, just where it touched the table or mantelpiece, and there only.

6. THE PONTIL-MARK

I mention this last because it does not apply to all old glass; it does not apply to glass that was cast or moulded, but it applies to all old blown glass, and is a very important test and guide indeed.

The pontil-mark is either a depression in the glass, shallow, about the size of the third finger-end, or a lump about that size, standing up from the level of the glass around it. The pontil-mark indicates _first_ that the piece of glass was originally blown, and _second_ that before removing the blow-pipe the workman, as usual, attached the blown glass to a pontil. The pontil or punt is an iron rod, joined to the vessel by a little melted glass while the vessel is still hot. When the time comes for taking away the pontil, it is done by contact with cold water, which causes the glass to contract around the pontil-end and the pontil to become detached. Glass vessels which were blown, only, show the depression or the lump accordingly: blown-glass vessels which were afterwards “cut” show it in part only, or not at all, if the glass-cutter removed it: vessels neither blown nor cut, but cast in a mould, do not show it because they never had it. In the eighteenth century and the first quarter of the nineteenth, glass moulding seldom took place; _so that the presence of the pontil-mark, whether it be a hollow or a lump, usually indicates age in the vessel which shows it_.

In the oldest glass the pontil-hole is flaked with something which rather resembles mica. In the oldest wine glasses the pontil-lump stands out knobbily. In every case there are signs of the local fracture. As a rule, the older the glass the bigger and rougher the pontil-mark.

7. THE WORKMANSHIP

The sensible, practical adaptation to purpose and the workmanlike make of English and Irish old glass afford another test; compared with our native product, French glass of the same period seems meagre, and Dutch flimsy or clumsy; Italian is fantastic and tawdry. The French and the Italian ware was often gilded, the Dutch painted: these are features seldom seen on English and Irish glass. In place of gilding or other added external decoration the island ware presented a substance neither too thin nor too thick, bowls perfectly rounded, stems strong and stout but not bulky, too tall, or too short; feet that hold on to the table well, and are not warped and uneven. In the freak and toy pieces, too, the excellence of the workmanship is obvious.

III. BLOWN WARE

The blow-pipe is not so old an implement as the potter’s wheel, but it seems to have been used 5000 years ago, in Egypt. Pliny first gave the fanciful account of Phœnician mariners accidentally fusing carbonate of soda with sea-sand; Dr. Johnson commented on that as follows: “Who, when he saw the first sand or ashes by a casual intenseness of heat melted into a metallic form, rugged with excrescences, and clouded with impurities, would have imagined that in this shapeless lump lay concealed so many conveniences of life as would in time constitute a great part of the happiness of the world? Yet by some such fortuitous liquefaction was mankind taught to procure a body at once in a high degree solid and transparent; which might admit the light of the sun and exclude the violence of the wind; which might extend the view of the philosopher to new ranges of existence, supply the decays of nature, and succour old age with subsidiary sight.”

Perhaps the first glassware was cast, or moulded, and there is no record of when or where the blow-pipe was first used. Ancient glass beads were probably made by moulding: probably the first glass ever made in England (the windows at Wearmouth Church, in A.D. 675) was cast. Not until the sixteenth century, apparently, was any blown glass made in England, and none of it remains both extant and intact; collectors are fortunate who come upon a piece of date so early as the first half of the seventeenth century, even; but from the last few years of the seventeenth century to the first few years of the nineteenth century inclusive, English and Irish blown glass was the best in the world. Therefore it is the _blown_ pieces which are the most characteristic, whether blown only or blown and afterwards engraved or cut. And the blown pieces, being intended for use, are the more numerous, and the more readily collected; the cut and engraved pieces, being for ornament, were more costly, and therefore fewer--though perhaps they have been more carefully preserved.

Drinking glasses are the most favoured aim of collectors and at present are the old glass objects most frequently offered, but as glass-collecting becomes more popular other glass objects are brought out of cupboards and places where they have been lying neglected; and my counsel is that a collector should acquire any piece of old blown-glass ware which he can.

IV. CUT, MOULDED, AND ENGRAVED WARE

A collector nervous about frauds should take note that _counterfeits of old cut-glass are much more numerous than counterfeits of old blown glass_; the latter is forged, in the shape of wine glasses with spiral stems, but not at all successfully. In cut-glass there is also the confusion with moulded glass to beware of, but the finger feels the edges of cut-glass to be slightly rough--rather like woodwork edges not sand-papered off--and the eye can detect a difference between what was cut and what was moulded. In fine old cut-glass the surface feels silky, and the touch slips upon it where the cutting is shallow; moulded glass has a wavy, rounded feel. Cut-ware glass seems to be the more popular “line” of collecting in glass, so it is well to consider the kinds of cutting here; remembering all the while the tests of tint, etc., as between the old and the new.

THE ORIGIN OF CUT-GLASS

English-and Irish-made glass, being heavier and better quality than any other, lent itself to cutting especially well; but probably the chief cause of the development of cut-glass here was the excise duty, which was levied on the plain manufactured article, so to speak--the glassware as the blower or moulder turned it out. The excise on that having been paid, all additional value given to the ware afterwards was non-taxable; therefore cutting came into vogue, and the glass cut in these islands became the best in the world. Of all cut-glass “Waterford” was the most beautiful; its specific gravity was the greatest, and deep cutting could take place without the ware being clumsily heavy to begin with.

THE “WATERFORD” STYLE OF CUTTING

Cork, Dublin, and Belfast cut-glass resembles Waterford cut-glass in everything but tint and weight, and perhaps it was the Celtic strain in the Irish glass-cutters’ blood which gave a more than English freedom and fantasy to their art. At any rate, the style of their cutting may be described as “curved” and “arabesque”; it was also shallow, generally; flowing lines and slight hollows, flattish rounded curves, and interlacings are evident; stems and candlesticks are “whittled” rather than cut deeply; rims are often surrounded by little semicircles, the edge of each semicircle being cut into angles with sharp points; sometimes these resemble half-open fans. The less the amount of cut ornament, the earlier the piece, as a rule. There is English style diamond-shaped cutting in Irish glass, and some “hob-nail” cutting--shaped flat ends standing out as hob-nails do from boot soles: there is some “strawberry” cutting; but as a rule, a fluent, curving, arabesquing style of cutting, with parallel horizontal lines, hollow prisms, upright fluting, and parallel vertical lines in panels, the latter sometimes resembling basket-plaiting, characterize Waterford cut-glass.

THE “STOURBRIDGE” CUTTING

The Stourbridge glass-cutters, on the other hand, rather over-did and abused the deep, regular, machine-like repetition of the “diamond” and the “hob-nail” and the “pomegranate.” Sometimes, however, the cutting was flat and flowing, and a festoon-like, hung-tapestry-like form may be seen.

THE “BRISTOL” CUTTING

Bristol glass-cutters went in for depth, but also for fantasy: a leaflike arrangement may be seen: the flowing lines in “Bristol” cutting are not so fine and curved as they are in Waterford glass.

“NEWCASTLE” CUTTING

Perhaps the “thistle” glasses, so popular in Scotland, were made and cut at Newcastle, the nearest glass-making centre: but “thistle cutting” does not mean cut like a thistle; it means minute diamond-shape cuts upon a vessel conventionally resembling a thistle-head in shape.

THE STAR AT THE BASE

In old cut-glass a star is often found, cut in the base of the vessel, _under_ it; usually the old glass-cutters extended this star to the very edges of the base. In more modern cutting the rays of the star do not extend so far.

MOULDED GLASS

About 1850 moulded imitations of cut-glass begun to oust the more expensive originals, and moulded glass of that date and since then is not worth a collector’s attention. But _old_ moulded glass, with the right tint in it, is worth acquiring; in the shape of candlesticks, for instance.

Cutting could be done, and was done, either upon glassware originally blown, or upon glass originally moulded--that is, cast in a mould. Sometimes the stem or shank and foot were left untouched while the upper part of the vessel was cut. Moulded glass uncut shows no acuteness of edge nor sharpness in the depressions. Modern moulded glass is often very elaborate, however, and the beginner may readily be deceived.

ENGRAVED GLASS

Some part of the engraving on some glasses was really cutting: in roses which form part of the decoration of finely engraved glasses, the finger feels plane after plane of depression, where the engraver deeply cut away the metal to imitate the petals of the rose. When the engraving goes as deep as this, or deeper than usual, the effect is to give a dust colour to the engraved work, which helps one to be sure that the object before one is not an old plain glass recently “engraved up” with a Jacobite or other design to make it sell for more money.

But as a rule engraving is a surface operation, done with a diamond or on the wheel, or by sandblast, or by use of acids. Where the engraving is flat, not cut in, the original greyish-white effect may long remain; a collector need not suppose that the engraving is recent because the tint of it is not brownish, a colour due to years and accumulations of dust. Indeed, the rougher and coarser the recent engraving the more likely dust to settle _in_ it, as well as upon it, and to give it a dusty tint. Really fine old engraving can remain almost as fresh in appearance and tint as it ever was, even till to-day. _And the natural tint of glass engraving resembles the tint of ground glass._ Of course, when the polishing-wheel was applied, either to parts or to the whole of the engraving, this greyish-white tint was polished away.

The polishing-wheel was also used to remove the pontil-mark (when it was a lump or knob) from the feet of wine and other glasses.

Dutch or German engraved old glass shows more _smeary_ in the engraved part than English or Irish glassware does.

V. OLD COLOURED GLASS

At Bristol, Nailsea, Wrockwardine, and perhaps at Norwich, glassware of various colours was made. There are collectors who care for nothing else but coloured glass; there are collectors who only care for coloured glass paper-weights; there are collectors who will not buy coloured glass at all.

“BRISTOL”

Bristol coloured glass is the most sought for. There are several varieties. The rarest is the opaque, whitish glass which rather resembles porcelain or Battersea enamel in general tint, and is painted upon as if it were porcelain or enamel: held to a good light this ware is seen to be rather opalescent, and might be dubbed opal glass. Edkins, a painter of Bristol delft, used delft-like colours and designs on this opal glass; wreaths of flowers (the rose and the fuchsia in particular) and flourishes in the Louis XV style are characteristic. Cups and saucers, teapots, tumblers, bowls and jugs, cruet vessels, and candlesticks of this ware exist, though few; the last-named imitated Battersea enamel candlesticks in shape and decoration. A characteristic of this glass is ridges or waves on the surface, detected by the finger. The earliest examples have domed and folded feet.

Less rare, but rare, are the wine glasses with red and white or blue and white spirals in the stems which were made at Bristol; if the white is not cotton-white but greyish, however, such a glass is probably old Dutch.

Fine tableware of transparent blue, blue-green, red, and purple was made at Bristol; the blue is a peculiar, unique blue, imitated but never well reproduced; where the glass is thick, it, held to the light, shows a Royal purple, and where thin it is almost a sea-blue. Egg-cups of this ware are handsome. Bristol red glass is of a ruby hue, with not so much vermilion in it as in Bohemian glass: there is also “cherry-red” glass. Bristol blue and red glass was sometimes touched with gilt, in lettering and lines; this did not wear well except when embossed.