Any ideas?

I might add that this is also an indication that these are not true Murano. Buyers are smart and will not overpay for something that is not what it is purported to be.

 

but...ohhhhh Brad.....there are exceptions......
I see folks every week overpay for fake carvings....and once saw a seasoned collector pay 3000 $....for a $100 fake rattle !

Still.........

 

If you can show me one with legitimate Murano markings or an original box with legitimate markings than I will concede. Until than this is just a seller who is saying her item is Murano maybe because she was told it was Murano or maybe she decided to use that word to help sell her item.

Sellers have been misidentifying stuff since the first person figured out if an item was ID'd as something special they could sell it easier. It definitely didn't begin with the internet. Over the years I have been shown stuff that people have bought at auctions, from antiques dealers, at flea markets, etc. & have been told that it was such & such. I than had the distasteful job of informing them otherwise. It sometimes was met with great disbelief & the remorse from the fact that they paid a lot of money.

That is why most of us hang out here on this forum. We genuinely like helping others discover what they really have & believe me when it is truly an exceptional item we take great delight in informing the OP thusly.

 

I couldn't agree more.

 

This has been some thread!!

Will, I hate to say it but the others are right. There isn't anything particularly old about your magnifying glass. The age of the owner is no indication of the age of the item.

Stuff like this happens a LOT in antiques circles unfortunately. I remember a woman who swore up and down that she had three antique coin-cases (like, sovereign cases) for sale and that they were sterling silver.

I told her quite blankly that they were silver, but they were vesta cases. And she exploded into a RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE about how she had been dealing in antiques for 30 years and how she knew what she had and that what she had were coin cases because matchsticks don't fit into them and all that stuff.

I told her that if she really was an antiques dealer of 30 years exprience, she'd know a vesta-case when she sees one, and would know that antique matches were MUCH smaller than modern ones. But she refused to listen. She stormed off.

 

I've seen supposed TC experts describe known Sklo glass as Murano. Gah.