on domed or high instep feet; sometimes the bowls are plain blown or
moulded, sometimes cut, sometimes hexagonal.
CUSTARD GLASSES
The most desirable custard glasses have handles. Some of them have
square bases. Some of them resemble smallish wine glasses with
corrugated stems. Most of them are decorated by pressed or incised
lines.
[Illustration: (1) HANDLED, AND (2) SQUARED-BASED CUSTARD GLASSES]
XVI. SALT CELLARS, PEPPER BOXES, SUGAR BASINS, ETC.
The “Sunderland” salt cellars have already been mentioned (see page
39); moulded or cut-glass salt cellars are much less rare. The oldest
of these seem to be those with oval bowls, in the Queen Anne silver
style, with diamond-shape bases on short stems, everywhere cut. Some
salt cellars have turned-over tops, much broader than the rest of the
vessel; there are Bristol striped salt cellars of this shape. In some
cut salt cellars the lines run horizontally. Victorian salt cellars
were very heavy and rather plain.
Pepper boxes of glass are round, or octagonal, plain or cut, with or
without a foot; holes are pierced in the top, there is a glass stopper
at the bottom; sometimes the base is square and the pierced top is of
silver. In some cases the vessel was used for castor-sugar.
Sugar-basins exist in numbers, and in plain, cut, opal, and coloured
glass, notably in the Bristol blue. There are covered sugar basins;
when these are large and cut they are known as sugar bowls. A special
type is the _caddy sugar-basin_ (see page 27); this was usually of
straight-sided form, blown, moulded, or cut, or both moulded and cut;
it stood in the central receptacle of a tea-caddy, within the round
hole between the two rectangular boxes which held green tea and black
tea respectively. These basins are much more seldom met with than the
caddies are. Often they are very heavy, and nearly always they are very
ornamental. Bristol opal-glass sugar and slop basins are met with; in
this glass complete tea-sets were made, including tea poys or glass
tea-caddies. In the Willett collection was “a Bristol glass teapot and
cover, with flowers in colours.” A glass teapot is rarely found.
XVII. MIRRORS, GLASS PICTURES, GLASS KNOBS
Mirrors more properly come within the category of furniture, but they
largely consist of glass, of course, so that some notice of them is
needed here.
In 1688 the art of casting large plates of glass began to be carried
on in France. In 1663 the art had been patented in England, but for
smaller sizes. One French mirror, now in the Louvre at Paris, was
valued at £6000 in 1791. Glass used to be a costly product; the chief
reason why old prints are usually found trimmed of their margins was
that glass to frame with them was so dear.
Old _mirrors_ with bevelled edges have the bevel flattish, nearly in
the plane of the glass; the bevel follows the shape of the frame,
but is irregular at its inner outlines, because the grinding of the
bevel was done by hand. Modern bevels, done by machinery, are almost
mathematically exact, and make an acuter angle with the frame than the
old bevels do. Also the silvering at the back of old mirrors differs
from the method of silvering now used; the difference is much more
easy to recognize by the eye than to describe, but there is a kind of
granulation in the older backing.
_Glass pictures_ are of two kinds; one in which the painting, in
oil-colours, was done upon the glass itself, usually at the back of
it; and another in which the paint was laid on coarsely behind a print
which, rubbed very thin at the back of the paper, had been affixed to
the back of the glass. This second kind is the more numerously met
with; also it is the most counterfeited. Age may be known, however,
by the curving, bubbly surface of the glass. A third kind, consisting
of a mosaic of bits of glass, so laid together in cement as to form a
picture is rare, even in modern examples.
Glass _knobs_ to handsome sideboards were used in the first quarter of
the nineteenth century, and have continually been used in Yorkshire,
for dressers, since then; old glass knobs are usually moulded, but some
are cut, though the round, uncut shape was the most convenient for
handling. Glass door-knobs are found.
XVIII. OLD PASTE, GLASS BEADS, AND TAWS
PASTE
All artificial “stones” used in jewellery are glass--glass variously
shaped, cut, and coloured--but “_old paste_” is glass not coloured;
though it may be backed with coloured foil, which shows a tint through
the glass. Old-paste collecting is, therefore, a branch of old-glass
collecting, and cannot be ignored in this book.
White paste is usually a substitute for diamonds; the carefully made
and cut old paste or strass (the French name for it, adopted under
Louis V, when the best paste was made) came very near the look of
diamonds. Paste or strass is glass of a very hard, bright kind, cut in
the way in which diamonds are cut, and mounted in the metals and styles
which usually go with diamond jewellery.
Behind these brilliant bits of cut-glass, silver or tinfoil was put, so
that light falling through the glass should be refracted and reflected
back, as it is in natural crystals such as diamonds. Time affects the
colour of this foil and thus gives a softer beauty to the effect. Old
paste is more beautiful than new paste for another reason, too--being
old glass it has the tints of old glass so often referred to in this
book. Some paste seems to have been made at Bristol, for “Bristows” or
“Bristol diamonds” some of it is called.
The older paste ornaments have the bits of glass set separately,
each setting for each bit separate though touching each other, and
therefore there is much metal shown in the settings; this applies to
the seventeenth-century paste. Later, near the end of the eighteenth
century and afterwards, as now, the bits of glass were sunk within a
continuous grooved or hollow setting, each bit held in place by a small
claw or raised clip of metal soldered on to the general groove. The
setting for white paste was usually silver: coloured pastes were often
set in gold, silver gilt, pinchbeck, bronze, and sometimes in pewter.
Paste consisting of very small pieces is preferable to the larger
varieties. “Diamond” paste is oftener found than “emerald,” “ruby,” or
“sapphire” paste. A certain form of paste (not truly paste) is found in
jewellery set with glass cut and silvered at the back, as if it were a
bit of looking-glass.
A test for the age of paste is the presence of scratches on its
surface, and of dimness brought about by chemical action of the air.
The scratches are oftenest found at the edges and flats of the facets.
GLASS BEADS AND TAWS
Glass _beads_ have been made ever since the making of glass was known,
in Egypt, Europe, and here. The general tests of age given in this book
may be applied to them. Glass _taws_ or marbles made for boys’ games,
or for a game called “solitaire” which used to be fashionable--a kind
of “patience” game with glass taws--used to show the characteristics of
air-spiral or cotton-white or coloured spiral stems.
XIX. GENERAL HINTS AND WARNINGS
INSCRIBED GLASSES
A collector should not miss an opportunity of buying an inscribed glass
cheaply: for instance, a naval rummer, engraved with a cutlass, a dove
with the olive-branch, and “Our brave Allies” for 4s. But fine engraved
and inscribed modern glasses, imitating though not reproducing exactly
the old ones, are on sale in curio-shops.
ROSES, OAK-LEAVES, BIRDS, AND BUTTERFLIES ON GLASS
Eventually any glass with roses, rosebuds, and a bird or butterfly
on it will rank as “Jacobite”; glasses with oak-leaves will also be
thought symbolical of Boscobel. Other such emblems will be discovered,
or are alleged; for instance, the aconite or monk’s-hood flower,
considered as an aspiration for another General Monk, who might restore
the Stuart line.
OLD GLASSES “ENGRAVED UP”
Jacobite, Williamite, and Hanover or Trafalgar glasses being in great
demand, _ingenious persons take a real old wine glass, goblet, or
rummer, that is plain and innocent at the time, and engrave it_ with
Jacobite emblems or “Bonny Prince Charlie’s” head, or William of
Orange on horseback, or “Trafalgar,” or “Nile.” As a rule the evident
newness, roughness, and lack of “wear” of such added engraving condemn
it, to the eye and to the finger; but very ingenious persons use
chemicals, or mud, or attrition, in order to disguise the whitish-grey
tint of newly engraved glass; if part of the engraving be “buffed”
up--that is, polished till it is bright, transparent, and not the tint
of ground glass (see centre of rose, page 70), detection becomes more
difficult.
THE COLLECTOR’S INSTINCT
But after a while the “instinct” of a collector comes into play to
protect him against these and other frauds. He cannot exactly reason
out and state why an offered piece is “wrong,” but he feels that it
is not right; which means that the “altogether” of the glass suggests
to his subconscious mind something which, though not expressed, is a
good reason for not buying the glass. But this “instinct” only comes
after much practice in collecting, and repeated turning of pages for
reference, in a book such as this; a collector’s books should not be
read once and then laid aside; they should be referred to on every
occasion, even after the “instinct” has begun to stir.
LIKELIHOOD AND IMPROBABILITY
Extraordinary chances come to the “picking-up” collector, I know, but
he does well to keep in mind the probability or the unlikelihood of
his “find” being real. It is unlikely that he should more than once
happen upon a Jacobite glass, for example; and again, if he sees a
fine “Trafalgar” glass exhibited in a small jeweller’s shop, with no
other glass at all or any other “curios,” the probability is that some
fraudulent person has planted that false glass there, in what is a
likely place to attract and deceive a collector who “picks up.”
THE ABSOLUTE FRAUDS
Old English and Irish glass has _a soft and mellow tone, both of look
and sound; it has a calm, respectable, honest appearance, as of quality
and honesty combined. Fitness for its purpose, good workmanship, some
quaintness perhaps, but not much fantasy, are visible in it_; if it
is decorated, _the decoration has been done well, but without lavish
artistic imagination_.
Now about the forgeries of it there is _something hard and fast, an
appearance too shiny and shining, and a rigidity of copying_. Seldom
are even two old glasses belonging to a set quite alike, but the
forgeries are exact replicas by the hundred. See one, you see them
all; but see one real old glass, you notice differences in it from all
others. _Forged glass, recently made, is “buffed” or polished on the
wheel all over its surface; old glass was never buffed, and its polish
rather resembles that of old furniture due to “elbow grease”_--the
polish comes of long washing, wiping, and drying.
I have already described the differences of tint. Forged glasses are
clumsy imitations in this, for the forgers do not try to give the old
dark tints--they use lead that is not so impure as the old lead was,
and therefore produces less visible oxide.
The _cutting of old glass, done by hand, produced and displays
irregularities_; so does modern cutting. But _the old irregularities
were due to a lack of machine-like precision, and were natural,
accidental irregularities: the modern irregularities are (so to speak)
mechanical, and obviously due to haste and cheapness of production_.
Labour and time were no great matters with the old workmen; the
counterfeit work is obviously done with the minimum of labour and time.
Modern English-made glass has often a good ring when flicked;
foreign-made frauds on the old have not, or have it seldom.
THE “MODERN ANTIQUE”
Much of the glass sold in the smaller curio-shops as “antique” was not
made to deceive: it is the offering of it in such places which intends
fraud. Most English-made reproductions of old glass in shape and
cutting were not intended by the manufacturer to delude a collector,
but to attract the ordinary buyer for table use or decorative use; one
who is not a collector but “likes something that looks old-fashioned,”
as he says.
Pawnbrokers’ and jewellers’ shops are stocked with what is called in
the trade “the modern antique”; other examples of this are the cheap,
hasty, and obvious copies of miniatures of famous beauties set in new
paste frames and sold for a few shillings. In pawnshops and ordinary
glass-shop windows a collector sees spiral-stem wine glasses made for
modern use and not intended to deceive; they are a kind of tawdrily
ornamental hock glass, embodying some modern designer’s idea of what
is beautiful; they correspond with no antique shape of bowl, the stems
are very thin and fragile, the feet are as small as or smaller than
the rim of the bowl, and the spirals are parti-coloured and “tight.”
No collector need be taken in by such as these--they were not made to
take him in, they are ordinary articles of modern manufacture and daily
commerce.
So are the white glass bowls, tazzas, centre-pieces, vases, “specimen
glasses,” etc., elaborately cut, perhaps engraved also, and meant for
modern tables and mantelpieces. These are copies of the fine old ware
simply because the old ware affords good models, and the information
given in chapter ii of this book will enable a collector to recognize
the modernity of these honest imitations, even when they are found (as
they often are) in a shop supposed to purvey antiques.
OUT-OF-THE-WAY PIECES
I do not say that very unusual and out-of-the-way pieces of old glass
should be avoided; as the collecting of glass increases, many rare old
things will be brought out of cupboards and sold in shops. But I do
say that, as a rule, a collector should feel suspicious of any piece
not resembling those which are pictured in books like this, or those
seen in museum collections. Thus a tall, bulky goblet engraved with a
portrait of William Pitt or Wellington, and inscribed accordingly, if
it is offered for 30s., say, is highly suspicious, to say the least of
it; and the safer course is to refuse apparent bargains of the kind.
FAKED JACOBITE GLASSES, ETC.
This applies even more to the pseudo-Jacobite, Williamite, Nelson,
and other famous glasses which are offered. They may be old glasses
“engraved up,” in which case the only mode of detection is the quality,
finish and tint of the engraving. They may be English-made modern
glass, of the right ring and the old way of manufacture; in which case
the test of tint in the glass itself may be added to the test of the
engraving. In either case the engraving may too closely reproduce an
original glass; it is seldom that two old glasses of this type exactly
resemble each other in the position of the various emblems, portraits,
and so on: for example, the word _Fiat_ is hardly ever found in exactly
the same place on two real old glasses. If the pseudo-Jacobite or other
engraved glass fails to respond to the characteristics of high instep
or domed foot, tint, ring, etc., or any of these, it should be rejected.
FAKED SPIRAL GLASSES
Fraudulent air-spiral or cotton-spiral-stemmed glasses, not engraved or
inscribed, are the fraud most often offered to a collector: in addition
to the other tests mentioned, _the test of the skill and quality of
the spiral itself can be used_ in this case. The _counterfeits show
spirals which are meagre, irregular, tight, or the wrong colour; they
do not fill up the stem, or exactly swell out to fill up the knops;
in the cotton-white there are defects resembling dropped threads in a
piece of linen, or missed stitches in a piece of lace_. I possess one
excellently twisted air-spiral forgery, a simple cable, which might
deceive if the plain glass around it forming the rest of the stem
were not so thick and so distinct as to suggest that the spiral was
made first and the plain glass placed around it afterwards; _the old
spirals, air, cotton-white or coloured, were twisted at the time of and
in the actual making of the whole stem_. Modern spiral stems are often
writhen or ridged on the surface, too; which means that the twisting
of the stem has been done with less than the old amount of skill. In
short, the making of spiral stems is a lost art, not recovered even by
the assiduous forgers, up to the present.
_If a spiral revolves upwards from right to left_--the right to the
left of the person looking at it--_reject it_; this defect was a
feature of the earlier forgeries, but the proper direction of the
upward twist (from left to right) is now used in these fakes.
The old cut stems are more easily imitated: _with these a test is the
absence of all trace of a pontil-mark_. In many old cut glasses the
finger feels a distinct depression, usually circular, which shows where
the old pontil-mark was cut away. In some forgeries, made by moulding,
not by blowing, the pontil-mark is imitated, but so grossly that it
ought not to deceive.
SHAM WINE COOLERS AND FINGER BOWLS
Counterfeit eared wine coolers and beautifully cut counterfeit finger
bowls are on the curio market; the usual tests should detect these.
Imitation Bristol blue, and violet glass is offered, but it is not the
right blue, which passes from a purple in the thick, to a sea-blue in
the thin, parts when held to the light; or not the right violet, in
which the same varying of colour is evident. Dozens of fraudulent white
and violet finger bowls, elaborately cut, are on the market; but it is
the rarest thing to find more than five or six left of any set of old
finger bowls.
OLD DUTCH GLASS
Glassware of the seventeenth and eighteenth century made in the
Lowlands, whether at Liège or Amsterdam, is known over here as “old
Dutch.” Collectors will do wisely to study this ware, whether for the
purpose of rejecting or acquiring it. Most collectors of English and
Irish glass reject it at once; they rightly say that _when thin it is
too light-weight, bubbly, flashy, flat and short of ring, and when
thick too smeary of tint and too clumsy to be first class; and often
the engraving is poor and ugly_. Indeed, there is _something unfinished
and unworkmanlike about it_, compared with the craftsmanship put
into English and Irish old glass; just as there is about Dutch-made
furniture of William and Mary and Queen Anne date, compared with
English-made furniture of the Chippendale period and style. _There is
something unsatisfactory in the look, shape, and proportions; it seems
to lack completeness and fitness._
In the stemmed glasses, however, _the Dutch air spirals are excellently
done--except where they join the foot of the glass, sometimes; and the
cotton-white spirals are hardly inferior to the English except in the
greyness of the colour_. For this reason, and also because the number
of collectors of old glass increases, Dutch wine glasses on spiral
stems go up in price at London auctions nowadays, and a rose glass or
other pretty, well-engraved piece of Flemish or Dutch origin may be
worth acquiring: there are collectors here of the Holland ware already,
and there will be more as English and Irish ware of the kind becomes
more difficult to find and expensive to buy. A spirit bottle, decanter,
goblet, or other piece of Dutch glass that is engraved with armorials
or dates, or names or legends, is not to be disdained, therefore; nor
is any unusual piece that is quaintly quirked, fluted, purfled, and
bossed.
CHIPPED OR BROKEN PIECES
It is sometimes worth while cheaply to acquire a chipped or even
a broken piece of old glass, if it is very rare in kind, form, or
purpose. Chipped feet of wine glasses can be ground again, but it
is hardly worth while; when the foot is almost all gone, a metal
substitute can be made for it, but that is hardly worth while. I know
of a Jacobite glass with a big piece out of the engraved portion
cemented in again; the price of the glass is £40 all the same; but as a
rule it is not worth while to acquire chipped or broken articles of old
glass.
“TOUT PASSE, TOUT CASSE, TOUT LASSE”
The French proverb tells us that everything passes, everything breaks,
everything wearies, at last. But the collector knows better than that;
he prevents old works of art and craft from passing altogether; he
keeps them safe from breaking, and he never wearies of adding to them
or studying them; as I hope this book may enable many a collector to
do.
INDEX
INDEX
ABSOLUTE frauds, 97
Air spiral, 41, 50
Air-spiral stems, 50, 51
BALUSTER stems, 40, 46, 47
Beads, 93
Beer glasses, 60
Belfast-made glass, 18
Bell bowl, 56
Blown ware, 26
Bohemian glass, 13
“Boot” glasses, 74
Bottles, 76
Bowl shapes, 56, 59
Bowls, 79
Bristol cut-glass, 31
coloured glass, 35, 36
opal glass, 35
Butterfly, engraved, 20
CADDY sugar-basin, 27, 88
Candlesticks, 60, 81
“Captain” glasses, 85
“Central tube” stem, 53, 55, 66
Champagne glasses, 53, 61
Chipped or broken pieces, 103
Cider glasses, 61
Coaching glasses, 62, 63
Coins in stems, 7, 47
Collar in stem, 46
Collectable articles, 6
Collector’s instinct, 96
range, 11
Coloured glass, 35
spirals, 54
Communion vessel, 10
Comports, 84
Cork-made glass, 17
Cotton-white spirals, 53
Corrugated stems, 50
Custard glasses, 87
Cut-glass, 29
stems, 55
DECANTERS, 77
Defects of quality, 20, 21
“Diamond” cutting, 30
Dome-foot, 41, 42
Double ogee bowl, 58
Drawn bowl, 49, 56
“Drawn” stems, 49
Drinking glasses, 40
Dutch glass, 19, 21, 102
EGG-CUP bowl, 41, 57
Engraved glass, 33
“Engraved up,” 95
Extensive feet, 41
“FAKED” glasses, 100
Feel of glass, 21
Feet of tumblers, 45
“Fiat” glasses, 68, 69
Firing glasses, 44
Firing-glass foot, 43
Folded foot, 43
Fuddling glasses, 62, 63
GENERAL guides and tests, 14
hints, 95
warnings, 95
Girandoles, 82
Glass knobs, 91
pictures, 90
Goblets, 12, 15, 41
“Greek key” spirals, 54
“HANOVERIAN” glasses, 71
Hemmed foot, 43
High instep foot, 42
“Hobnail” cutting, 30
Hogarth glasses, 64
Hop and barley glasses, 50, 60
IRISH-MADE glass, 17
JACOBEAN lamp, 27
Jacobite glasses, 66, 68
mottoes, 68
Jelly glasses, 86
“Joey” glasses, 62, 73
Jugs, 77
KITCHEN glasses, 64
Knife-rests, 80
Knives, 80
Knopped stems, 40
LAMPS, 27, 83
Likelihood and improbability, 96
Lipped ogee bowl, 58
Lumpy stems, 40
Lustres, 82
“MASTER” glasses, 85
Mirrors, 90
“Modern antiques,” 98
Mugs, 7, 62
Mum glasses, 61
NAILSEA glass, 37
Norwich foot, 43
OAKLEAF on glass, 63, 68
Ogee bowl, 58
“Old Pretender” glasses, 69
Out-of-the-way pieces, 99
PAPER-WEIGHTS, 37
Paste, 92
Pepper boxes, 88
Pestles, 80
Plain round stems, 49
“Pomegranate” cutting, 31, 32
Pontil-marks, 23, 24
Punch-lifters, 79
QUALITY of metal, 19
RECTANGULAR bowl, 57
Rose glasses, 18, 59, 66
Rummers, 16, 61
SALT cellars, 39, 88
Scratches, 22
Shams, 101
Signs of use and wear, 22
“Silver” spirals, 50, 51
Sounds, 18
Spirit glasses, 62
Spoons, 80
Square foot, 45
Star-cutting, 32
Stems, 46-55
Stourbridge glass, 31
Stout stems, 41
Straight-sided bowl, 57
Stuart emblems, 66, 67
Styles of cutting, 30, 31
Sugar-basins, 27, 88
crushers, 80
Sunderland glass, 38, 39
Sweetmeat glasses, 1, 85
TANKARDS, 73
Tavern glasses, 64
Taws, 94
“Tears” in stems, 48
“Thimbleful” glasses, 65
Thistle engraved, 67
“Thistle” glass, 40
Thumb glasses, 45
Tints, 14, 20
Toastmaster glasses, 63
Toddy-lifters, 79
“Trafalgar” glasses, 16, 97
Tumblers, 73
VENICE glass, 12
WAISTED bowl, 58
bell bowl, 57
Waterford glass, 3, 17, 21, 30
Weight, 21
“Williamite” glasses, 71
Window glass, 8
Witch-balls, 8, 38
Workmanship, 25
Wrockwardine glass, 38
“YARD of ale” glasses, 64
Printed in Great Britain by
Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
Transcriber's notes:
In the text version, italics are represented by _underscores_, and bold
and black letter text by =equals= symbols. Superscripts are represented
by ^{} and subscripts by _{}.
Missing or incorrect punctuation has been repaired. Inconsistent
spelling and hyphenation have been left as printed.
The following mistakes have been noted:
p.15. Tin Changed to Tint.
p.16. The older the Georgian the glass, extra the removed