Gonna strip the paint off this little piece of glass.

Would you? It's an opaline glass pin tray, about 5" long, molded as a flower. Looks to me like it was painted as a pansy, which it does resemble. It probably looked pretty good. It doesn't look so good now. The paint isn't just mostly missing, what's there is dull and flat. At an idle guess, it looks like someone put it through a dishwasher. It's strongly modeled and I think at this point it might look better as unpainted glass. No maker's mark, but a good, strong shear line on the back. What do you think?

 

Personally, I like the way it looks and I don't think I'd be too quick to take off the paint. Most circa 1900 milk glass was cold painted so it's not unusual to find faded paint and/or missing paint. If I was selling it I would definitely sell as is. But that's JMHO - it's your pin tray and you can do whatever you think will make it look better to you. Most milk glass pin dishes do not have a great deal of value, regardless of decoration, so I don't think stripping it will hurt the value much, if at all.
Don

 

What Don said. Unless you are planning to keep it, and absolutely despise the paint, and therefore Have to de-color, I wouldn't touch it.

But this, of course, is from someone who isn't all that fond of perfect.

 

I probably wouldn't mess with it either. I've been known to strip a piece or two of painted details, if said detail was 75% gone and what remained looked just plain ugly ...and it wasn't this old. This one I"d leave be; it looks the way it's supposed to at this stage.

 

Cold painted milk glass still sells even in that condition. If you're going to sell it, leave it as is.

 

OK then, I'll leave it as is. (Saves me the trouble of re-photographing as well.) Thanks to all.

 

This is Gillinder's Pansy tray shown in a 1902 ad with factory paint while B&W the colors could easily be the same as yours. Personally I would not strip it.

 

Thanks for that. It's the kind of piece where I was not expecting an ID.

 

It was a stumble upon while looking up something else. A great search technique.

 

Yeah, but hardly dependable......