Glass Glossary - A-Co - Co-Fl - Fl-K - L-Ro - Ro-T - U-Z

Air twist. Spiral veins of air formed by extension of tears [air bubbles] usually in stems of drinking vessels and shafts of candlesticks; in the United States found occasionally in individual non-commercial pieces of South Jersey Type.

Ale glass. Long, narrow flute for serving strong ale, a highly alcoholic drink; from 1740 might be engraved with the hop and barley motif.

Amberina. Made from a gold-ruby compound, an amber glass mixture containing the metal gold; colours shade from yellow-amber to dark red. New England Glass Co., U.S.A., 1883.

Anglo-Venetian glass. Tableware in fine soda glass made in London from 1570 until about 1680.

Annealing. Toughening flint glass by raising to a high temperature and then cooling it gradually. [a] Annealing oven: an oven known as the tower, built above the melting chamber and operated on waste heat from below; [b] annealing tunnel, or leer: a tunnel 5 or 6 yards [4.6-5.5 m] in length through which newly made glass passes slowly to cool, toughen, and acquire increased brilliance.

Applied decoration, finial, foot, stem. Ornament and parts formed from separate gather of metal and tooled into form. See Finials, Foot.

Arabesques. Engraved scrollwork of flowers and foliage on hollow ware.

Arch patterns. [1] Blown-three-mould patterns classified as arch, having an arch, Gothic or Roman, as a predominating or conspicuous motif from 1823; [2] pressed-glass patterns also.

Art glass. Late nineteenth-century U.S. glass showing use of new materials and techniques; includes Peachblow, Burmese, Satin, Tiffany, etc.

Aurene. Gold ruby glass heated to different degrees resulting in iridescent shades of yellow, violet, and pink. Stourbridge Steuben Glass Works, U.S.A.

Aventurine. A dark-brown glass with gold specks, so called from its accidental discovery at Murano, Italy. It was made by mixing copper crystals with the molten vitreous material. In the eighteenth century the Miotti factory specialized in its production.

Baccarat. Together with Cristalleries de Saint-Louis [q.v.] the greatest large-scale producer of fine glass in France all through the nineteenth century. It was founded in 1778. The first furnace for lead crystal of the English type was installed in 1819. From 1822 to 1858 it was under the inspiring directorship of Jean Baptiste Toussaint, to whom must go the credit for the very high quality of the products and the progressive technical and artistic style of the colour glass about the middle of the century. From about 1850 [p. 260] opal glass was produced in a variety of exquisite colours and elegant shapes, many of them produced by moulding. This production goes on until c. 1870. All through the period cut crystal glass in a rich and dignified style remained a main product of the factory.

Baluster. See Stems.

Baroque patterns. Blown-three-mould patterns classified as baroque, composed of bold motifs in relief; chosen instead of rococo to distinguish typical English and American designs from contemporary French glass related in design but tighter in composition and lower in relief.

Barovier, Angelo. The name of a craftsman or factory owner, of Murano, Italy, praised by Filarete in his treatise De Arcitetura [1451-64]. None of his productions can with certainty be identified, though a marriage goblet in the museum at Murano is traditionally associated with him.

Batch. Mixture of raw materials ready for melting.

Beads. Called conterie of brightly coloured glass imitative of semi-precious and precious stones were made in Venice from a very early period. J. G. de Keysler, who visited Venice in the 1730s, noted that several streets were entirely inhabited by people making and stringing these beads which, he said, 'the women of the lower class wear about their necks and arms for ornament. The larger sort are used for making rosaries.' They were exported to the East together with margariti [q.v.] or imitation pearls.

Beakers. Stemless drinking glasses, or beakers, are among the earliest specimens of Venetian glass. A fine-enameled example is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. They were particularly popular in the eighteenth century, and many of this date are decorated either with engraving or enameled figures.

Becker, Johann Albrecht. A Saxon glass decorator who worked at Nöstetangen, Norway, from 1767 to 1773 and later opened his own workshop in Drammen. It was active until 1807, perhaps later, and at times Villas Vinter was attached to it. Most of the engravings, however, seem to have been of an unpretentious nature.

Beilby, William [1740-1819]. A celebrated enameller of flint glass who worked in Newcastle-upon-Tyne from about 1760 to 1776, signing his best work by name and with a lifelike butterfly.

Belfast [Benjamin Edwards]. The earliest reference discovered by Westropp was an advertisement dated 1781. The wording suggests that the costly Perot furnace was in use and 'enamelled, cut and plain wine glasses' made as well as cheaper table glass. From 1783 Edwards was making all kinds of glass-making machinery and hollow-ware moulds, some fluted, which he sold to the newly established Irish glasshouses. By 1805 Edwards was issuing a wide variety of cut table glass and blown-moulded decanters, as well as lustres and girandoles. The glasshouse continued with varying degrees of prosperity until 1829. [p. 261]

Blank. Uncut vessel before it is decorated.

Bloom An all-over film of opaque dullness occasionally found on the surface of flint glass. English and Irish alike, although usually associated with Irish. It has been described by Mrs. Graydon-Stannus as 'rather like the bloom of grapes and if cleaned off it will return'. This effect is caused by the use of high-sulphur fuels in the leer. Bands of bloom may be found encircling hollow ware a little distance below the rim; these are the result of reheating at the furnace mouth. This bloom is not to be confused with the milkiness found inside old decanters.

Blown mouldings.
[a] One-piece moulds were first used in which inexpensive hollow ware was blown and shaped. Molten flint glass solidified quickly on the surface in contact with the mould; a quick setting flint glass was therefore evolved, not possessing the high brilliancy of metal used for freeblown glass. A gather of this molten metal was taken and blown into a mould smaller than the finished glass vessel; the semi-moulten glass was then expanded by further blowing. Such a mould had always to be made slightly greater in diameter at the top than at the base to permit easy withdrawal. Glass shaped by this process may be recognized by its slightly pebbled appearance caused by contact with the mould. The lower part of the mould interior might be intaglio-cut with a circuit of slender flutes rising vertically from the base. Inflation forced the glass closely against the inner surface. Forming a clean impression. The quick-setting glass ensured that the section of the metal remained constant so that the flutes on the outer surface appeared as corresponding depressions within.

[b] The two-piece open-and-shut mould was invented in 1802 by Charles Chubsee of Stourbridge. Glass blown into such a mould was both shaped and decorated with diamond and other motifs in deep relief. Patterns followed those worked on free blown glass by the wheel cutters. From 1825 the long-accepted geometrical designs met active competition in the form of baroque scrolls, fan patterns and arch patterns. The gunmetal mould with an intaglio design sunk into the inner surface was the same size as the finished article, which was fully inflated in a single operation.

[c] The three-piece mould, with one fixed and two hinged sections each cut with an intaglio pattern, dates from about 1830. When the glass was inflated within the mould the blowing force caused the joints to open infinitesimally, thus producing slight ridges on the surface of the glass or a slight break in the pattern.

Blown-three-mould glass. Collector's name for a category of inexpensive blown-moulded ware, popular from about 1815 to 1835; blown in full-size piece moulds for: [1] shape and decoration; [2] decoration and partial shape; [3] for decoration only, thus using the full-size mould as a pattern mould; transitional between pattern-moulded and fully moulded; characterized by patterns classified in three categories , according to predominating or most conspicuous motifs, arch, baroque, and geometric [the last, the earliest, and simulating cut glass], concavo-convex surfaces, an identifying characteristic. It was outmoded by pressed glass.

Blowpipe. Long, hollow, iron tube used to hold a gather of molten glass.

Blue glass. The leading Irish glasshouses produced a blue glass resembling the English Bristol blue flint glass coloured by the addition of smalt. A recipe for such glass was found among the Waterford papers dated 1786. The finer-quality blue glass was prepared in small covered pots. Known as piling pots, placed on the ordinary pots. The quality of the glass was improved by keeping the pot in the furnace long after completion of vitrification, thus making it harder and freer from specks and bubbles. In the early nineteenth century a less gorgeous blue was acquired by using less-expensive ultramarine. A wide variety of domestic ware was made. A set of six dark-blue-wine-glass coolers has been noted marked 'Penrose Waterford'.

Blue tint. The faintly bluish hue present in the texture of some late Georgian flint glass. For more than half a century collectors deemed this to be soley a Waterford characteristic, and as such was sold at greatly enhanced prices. This claim for Waterford cannot be substantiated. True, such blue-tinted glass was issued by Waterford, for Mrs. Graydon-Stannus exhibited marked examples to the Royal Society of Arts in 1925, but it is found in other Irish glass, as well as among the productions of Stourbridge, Birmingham, Bristol, Scotland, and elsewhere.

This peculiar depth of tone shows the glass to contain lead oxide prepared from Derbyshire mined lead, preferred at many glasshouses because of the molten metal. Unfortunately the Derbyshire lead contained an impurity which caused this bluish tint, recognized as a defect by the late Georgian glassmen and which they endeavoured to eliminate.

The Irish glasshouses for the most part used lead oxide made by Wilson Patten, Bank Quay, Warrington, from Derbyshire lead. Not every consignment contained the blue-tingeing impurity, then known to glassmen as Derby blue. There was, therefore, no consistency in the presence of Derby blue in flint glass during the period concerned, and depth and tone of tint varied.

In 1810 Blair Stephenson, Tipton, Staffordshire, invented a process by which this tint could be eliminated. By 1816 most English and Irish glasshouses were using Stephenson's purified lead oxide, its manufacture proving a profitable monopoly until his manager joined another firm as a competitor. It is doubtful if the Derby blue tint is to be found in Irish glass made later than 1815.

Recent efforts to reproduce the genuine Derby blue tint have failed, but a bogus 'Waterford Blue' has been in production for more than thirty years.

Bontemps, Georges [1799-1884]. Director of the Choisy-le-Roi [q.v.] factory from 1823 to 1848. The son of an officer, who was descended from one of Louis XIV's valets, he became an enterprising industrialist, an inventive technician, and a learned scholar. He was the real pioneer in France in the discovery and exploitation of coloured glass on a high artistic level. In 1827 he began the production of opal glass, and in 1839 was making filigree glass in the Venetian style. In 1844 he made millefiori glass. He installed a stained-glass workshop at Choisy with an Englishman, Edouard Jones, to direct it, and there also was a painters' studio. The political developments in 1848 forced him to leave the country, and he became attached to the firm of Chance Brothers in Smethwick near Birmingham. His famous handbook on glass making, Guide du Verrier [Paris, 1868], remained [p. 262] a standard work of its kind until quite recent times. By succeeding generations of French glass makers Bontemps was considered 'notre maître â tous' [Appert & Henrivaux].

Bottle glass. See Green glass.

Bottles. In the United States, with window glass, the commercial product of glasshouses of eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; of dark olive-green or olive -amber metal, blown in full-size two piece moulds. In England the use of bottles became wide-spread in the middle of the seventeenth century. Many were manufactured in Bristol and Nailsea. Shapes and types of English and U.S. bottles are listed below.

Calabash [USA]. Ovid body tapering into cylindrical neck with collared lip; blown in full-size two-piece mould with intaglio designs falling in the pictorial , decorative, and historical categories; c. 1850-70.

Carboy [USA]. Large demijohn; usually set in wooden tub; used mainly for corrosive liquids, such as aqua fortis.

Carboy [England]. A large vessel made of green bottle glass to carry corrosive acids for industrial purposes. They date from the late eighteenth century and were packed originally in wicker containers and more recently in steel frames stuffed with straw.

Chestnut [USA]. Somewhat carelessly freeblown bottles with long neck and fat chestnut-shaped body, frequently full of bubbles and asymmetrical; without uniformity of size, ranging from a few ounces to a gallon or more in capacity; ranging, in natural bottle-glass colours, from ambers through olive ambers to greens; called also Ludlow because of a tradition of having been made in a Ludlow, Massachusetts, glasshouse, and junk; made generally, eighteenth-early nineteenth centuries.

Cylinder [England]. Date from the late 1730s, shaped in earthenware moulds. By 1750 one-piece gunmetal moulds had been introduced. These bottles measured 5 inches [12.7 cm] in diameter, reduced to about 4 inches [10.2 cm] in the 1770s. In cylindrical bottles until the 1790s a distinct bulge encircled the base of the body. By the early 1790s bottle glass could be blown to a thinner section in the mould without loss of strength and diameter and was reduced to 3 inches [7.6 cm], with the shoulder high and less pronounced than formerly. From 1820 shoulders were still further accentuated. Mechanically moulded bottles date from the 1840s

Demijohn [U.S.A.]. Mainly a storage and shipping bottle, often with wicker jacket; freeblown or moulded for symmetrical, globular, or oval form, with long neck and lip usually collared; quart to twenty-gallon sizes. In Britain capacity not less than 3 gallons and not more than 10 gallons.

Nursing [sucking] [U.S.A.]. Flattened ovoid flask rounded at end, short neck with sheared, sometimes flaring, lip; plain and pattern-moulded in ribs, flutes, and diamonds; eighteenth-early nineteenth centuries.

Onion [England].

Pocket Bottle [U.S.A.]. Flask of about half-pint to pint capacity. See Flasks.

Shaft and globe [England]. Sealed and dated examples show that they developed in four main chronological groups from about 1620 to 1730: [a] 1620-60, bulbous body, low kick and long neck encircled half an inch below the smooth, flat-surfaced lip with a thin, sharp-edged string ring. [b] 1650 more pronounced, the sides of the body sloping more steeply inward towards the base, making the kick narrower. The knife edge was retained on the string ring. [c] 1680-1715, the body was progressively widened and became more squat, with a high kick. The neck, shorter and tapering, joined the body in a smooth curve harmonizing with the more rounded shape of the body. [d] 1710-40, the sides of the body became perpendicular or with a slight outward slant, curving into the neck with a shoulder more square and pronounced than formerly. The neck was wide at the shoulder junction and the string rim raised to a position immediately beneath the mouth. These forms were abandoned from the late 1730s in favour of cylindrical bodies.

Stiegel-type pocket or perfume [U.S.A.]. Chunky, bulbous form, slightly flattened wide sides; pattern-moulded designs.

Swirl [U .S.A.]. A Midwestern type, patternmoulded in vertical ribs or flutes, swirled usually to right, occasionally to left; wide colour range, from aquamarines to deep greens, olive greens, citron, ambers, and blues; including two distinctive shapes: [a] globular, nearly spherical body, slender neck, slightly tapering or straight, collared lip; [b] short cylindrical body, sides often tapering slightly, sloping shoulder, short neck, collared lip; proportions, distinguishing features; some forms also with vertical and broken-swirl ribbing or fluting.

Bowes, Sir Jerome. In 1592 Bowes acquired the 'Venetian glass' monopoly in England from Verzelini [q.v.], paying Elizabeth I an annual rental of 200 marks [£133 6s 8d] for the privilege.

Bowl forms. [a] Bell, 1715-80: a deep, waisted bowl with incurved profile and wide mouth derived from the funnel bowl. The base, until 1740, might be a solid mass of glass and welded to the stem; [b] bucket, 1730-70: with sides almost vertical and horizontal base. Some late 18th-c bucket bowls are lipped. The waisted bucket and incurved bucket are also found; [c] double ogee, 1700-20: expansive shallow examples of thick section ; from 1750, smaller and with thin walls. Ogee and waisted ogee are also found; [d] round funnel, characteristic of the seventeenth century, when rarely with a collar at stem and bowl junction. Until 1690 the bowl was long in proportion to the stem; as the bowl lost depth it became wider at the rim: less massive from 1710; [e]]straight funnel or conical; a straight-sided bowl shaped like the frustum of an inverted cone; [f] thistle, from 1715: in several profiles in which the lower part is a solid or hollow sphere of glass; [g] trumpet: a waisted bowl of incurving profile merging into a drawn stem. [p. 263]

Bowls, drinking-glass. [a] Thick-walled type until the 1740s. The stem may be drawn from the base of the bowl, drawn into a short neck to which the stem is attached, or the bowl may be attached to the top moulding of the stem, traces of the weld being visible; [b] from 1740, light, thin-walled; [c] from 1790, thick-walled with cutting in deep relief.

Briati, Giuseppe[1686-1772]. A craftsman who inherited, or founded, a glassworks at Murano, Italy, in the early 18th c. He specialized in making glass of Bohemian type and is sometimes said to have worked in Bohemia. In 1739 he transferred his premises to Venice itself, establishing a factory in the parish of S. Angelo Raffaele, where he produced, among other wares, mirrors, picture frames, bizarre table centres, panels for the decoration of furniture, and large chandeliers.

Bristol blue. Made at most glass-making centres, may be grouped into five basic qualities of glass: [a] 1760-90, intense dark blue with a faintly purplish hue; [b] 1790-1805, harsh dark blue, less intense than [a]; [c] 1804-20s as [a] but without the faintly purplish tint; [d] 1821-40s, a costly near-royal blue known as King's blue; [e] as [a] but in decorative forms and not flawed. These may be subdivided into qualities varying with the technical facilities available at individual glasshouses.

Brocard, Joseph. Enamel painter and decorator of glass, working in a studio in Paris during the latter part of the nineteenth c. His exquisite pastiches of Islamic enamelled glass decoration were highly praised by critics at the Exhibition in 1878. Later he liberated himself somewhat from these models, and used Chinese or naturalistic flowers for his designs. He always preserved a stylization of patterns and a coolness of colour, which is reminiscent of Oriental art, and rare and refreshing in the France of the art nouveau. In some instances he must have collaborated with the factory which made his glass, as the decorative pattern has been embedded in the glass itself and later picked out in enamels.

Broken swirl. Pattern-moulded ribbed design obtained by twice moulding a gather in ribbed or fluted dip mould; first impression of vertical ribs, twisted or swirled, gather reinserted in mould impressing vertical ribs upon the swirled; occurring [p. 264] most frequently in the U.S. on Pitkin bottles, jars and flasks having two-layered body [half-post] and on Midwestern bottles , flasks and hollow ware blown from single gather; ribs varying in closeness.

Brussa, Osvaldo. An eighteenth-century Italian glass painter. In the museum at Murano there is a portrait which shows him holding a beaker on which birds are painted.

Buckets. Either for holy water or for domestic use, these were occasionally made at Murano, Italy, in the sixteenth century and later. Their shapes are derived from silver vessels of the same type.

Burmese glass. See Uranium glass.

Butterfly. A coloured butterfly often occupies the centre of a paperweight. Sometimes the insect is poised over a flower, sometimes above a latticinio, or other filigree, ground. Also an emblem engraved on Jacobite glass, over the signature of William Beilby [q.v.]

Calcedonia. A type of glass which imitates the colour and veining of chalcedony, first produced at Murano, Italy, in the fifteenth century. It appears to have enjoyed great popularity throughout the Renaissance period and again in the 18th c. In the 19th c. made in Bohemia and England.

Cameos. See Sulphides.

Camphor glass. White, cloudy appearance; known in U.S. blown-mould and pressed glass.

Candlesticks. Made at Murano, Italy, in the eighteenth c., usually copied from silver patterns.

Cane. Familiar name for the rods of coloured glass from which the patterns were formed in many types of paperweights [see Paperweights].

Carré, Jean. In 1570 Jean Carré of Arras established a glass house in the Crutched Friars, London, bringing over several glass-making families from Lorraines. After Jean Carré's death in 1572 the glass house was acquired by Giacomo Verzelini, until then his chief assistant.

Cased glass. Two or more layers of glass differing in colour; called overlay when design is cut through to body colour; popular Bohemian glass technique.

Caster. [1] Bottle form with perforated cap, usually metal; called also shaker; [2] frame for condiment bottles or containers such as casters [shakers], cruets, and mustard pots.

Caster bottles. Bottles to set in caster or cruet frame - shakers, cruets, mustard pots.

Chain. U.S. name for applied, tooled decoration; links formed by drawing together at regular intervals two threads of glass laid-on around a parison or body of partially formed object, called also guilloche; in England, trailed circuit or ornament.

Champagne glasses. English shapes: [a] 1678-1715: tall flute with short stem or button; [b] 1715 to mid -1730s: tazza-shaped bowl, often ogee in form, usually on moulded pedestal stem; [c] 1730-45: drawn flute; [d] 1745-1830: long-stemmed flute; [e] from 1830: the hemispherical bowl or coupe.

Chance, W. and R. L. In 1793 William Chance became a partner in the Nailsea, England, glassworks founded five years earlier by John Robert Lucas [q.v.]. Chance's son, Robert Lucas Chance, was manager of the Nailsea factory in 1810, but in 1815 he left the west, sold his share in the glass house, and went to London. By 1824 he had founded the Spon Lane glassworks in Birmingham, a concern that became exceedingly prosperous and in 1870 bought up the Nailsea firm. The latter was closed three years later, and the Spon Lane glassworks remains in the hands of the descendants of Robert Lucas Chance to this day.

Chandeliers. Of Venetian glass, these seem first to have been made by G. Briati [q.v.], who won praise from Carlo Gozzi for his 'magnificent clusters for illuminating the rooms of great Lords. Theatres or the streets on Festive occasions'. They enjoyed great popularity throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. 18th-c. examples are among the finest objects in Venetian glass, very elaborate and richly decorated with polychrome flowers, but few have survived intact. Good examples may be seen in the museum at Murano, the Ca' Rezzonico Venice, and the Pinacoteca Querini Stampalia.

Chequered diamond. Decorative motif, large diamond enclosing four small ones: [1] pattern-moulded German diaper design: used in the United States, by Stiegel at Manheim, Pennsylvania [possibly], at the New Bremen Glass-manufactory and in one or more early nineteenth-c. Midwestern bottle houses, principally for flasks and salts of type having slender double-ogee bowl and applied circular foot; [2] full-size, piece-moulded, blown-three-mould motif in geometric pattern [McK. GH-29].

Chestnut Bottle. See Bottles.

Choisy-le Roi. Factory in Paris, founded in 1821 by M. Grimbolt and closed down in 1851. Between 1823 and 1848 the factory was under the inspiring directorship of Georges Bontemps [q.v.] and became the pioneering establishment in the country in the making of coloured glass and the exploitation of its artistic possibilities.

Clichy. Factory founded in 1837 by MM. Royer and MaÎs at Billancourt near Pont de Sèvres in Paris for the production of cheap glass for export. By 1844 the factory had moved to Clichy-la-Garenne and had begun producing coloured glass, a two-layer cased-glass technique with a fine yellow colour being a special achievement. By 1849 the factory's mastery of colour techniques must have been greatly extended, for by that time it seems to have taken over the role, previously held by St. Louis, of the finest producer of paper-weight. At the Great Exhibition in London in 1851, Clichy was the only French cristallerie to be represented. The display consisted of much elaborate colour glass, cased glass in a great variety of shades, filigree and millefiori glass [a fine pair of signed vases are in the Corning Museum of Glass, New York], and coloured and painted opal glass. At the International Exhibition in London in 1862 an engraved cup from Clichy was acquired by Felix Slade 'as one of the best examples of engraving on glass in the Exhibition'. Slade usually collected only antique glass. In 1868 Bontemps mentions that aventurine glass has been made at Clichy. The high level of craftsmanship and artistry seems to have been kept up until c. 1875. About ten years later the factory was absorbed into the Verrerie de S¶vres. [p. 265] Although glass was made at Clichy for almost fifty years, and in spite of the leading position it held among the producers of fashionable glass of its time, very few pieces of the factory's products can today be identified as such.

Collar rib. Moulded rib simulating round plain collar; mainly on blown-three-mould decanters and toilet bottles.

Collars. U.S. term synonymous with neck rings. Heavy applied thread or ribbon, plain or tooled, laid on around: [1] lips of bottles and flasks; [2] necks of decanters [a] plain round, single or double, [b] rigaree, single or double, [c] triangular, usually single, rarely double, [d] triple ring [wide single with medial rib [e] chain, rare; [3] around stem or shaft, also part of composite stem or shaft; vermicular [wavy], rare in American glass.

Compote. Bowl on standard [stem and foot]; also on domed or pedestal foot.

Cordial glasses. During the seventeenth century cordials were taken from miniature wine glasses measuring 4-6 inches [10.2-15.3 cm] in height. A distinct type of glass, its bowl shorter, squarer, and of smaller rim diameter than a wine glass bowl, became fashionable from about 1720; [a] 1720-40: straight stem of normal length and diameter; [b] from 1735: the stem was lengthened, of extra thick diameter, and might be centrally knopped; [c] from 1740: the bowl was less capacious; [d] 1740-70: the flute cordial, often termed a ratafia glass.

Cords. Slight striae discernible to the fingers on the surface of the glass.