Help ID / info w Cut Flint Glass Vase ~1845 ??

[ We are slowly liquidating the estate of a very traditional and expert US glass collector. So - full disclosure - any help will just go towards me listing it properly on e.g. ebay and getting a fair price. I do love some of these items and they've been around my whole life but I can no longer keep them. ]

On this vase: I think it's cut flint glass, and from the ribbed pattern maybe ~1845 and probably US. I see no maker's mark and no mold lines. All the pattern edges are sharp, like known cut glass and quite different from known pressed glass. However, it seems odd to find large inset panels (rectangular, in lower half) on cut glass. It rings more than pressed glass but not as much as modern crystal. The glass is gray and thick; at 7" tall it weighs 26 oz. Under UV light there is no particular shade (eg. no green or yellow glow). As can be seen, one of the top rim petals is chipped and half gone; this has not been smoothed.

Also, I don't see anything like it in the big EAPG books (Reilly; Jenkins; Metz) which is another reason why I'm guessing it pre-dates that.

Any corrections / refinements are welcome and a perhaps minimum value estimate especially so.

Thanks for any help.

 

Welcome Aaron.

 

Update: Elsewhere it's been suggested that this is not US but instead British "Georgian period" glass; and looking at examples of those patterns that seems pretty likely. And consistent with the material. So... progress!

 

Georgian glass is typically greyish.

 

I had thought gray based on looking through the glass eg. up through the bottom, but now realize it has a yellow tinge throughout, which is more apparent when looking edge-on.

So yes, that increases the puzzle factor. Thanks for raising the issue. I'm looking for references on Georgian period glass because the design elements fit that. However, I've found nothing that's similar overall.

 

"I don't see anything like it in the big EAPG books (Reilly; Jenkins; Metz) "

No wonder, you call it flint, it's blown and cut. not pressed (EAPG)

 

Yeah, I know more now. Such as that while "PG" stands for Pattern Glass (not Pressed Glass, as you seem to think), all Pattern Glass is pressed. I'll try to not leave myself open to such criticism in the future; thanks.

And fyi a lot of EAPG is flint.

 

"And fyi a lot of EAPG is flint."

With all due respect; while there may be pieces of flint glass that have patterns, EAPG refers almost exclusively to pressed patterned lime glass, Thus the content of the books by the authors mentioned is pressed lime glass not cut flint glass.

 

I already agreed that pattern glass is pressed glass so "cut" is no longer in question. (no doubt some, somewhere, had added cut features).

However, EAPG does not imply lime glass.

First, there is a lot of pressed flint with a pattern (more on what that does and doesn't mean below). Though soda-lime glass became dominant after the Civil War, firms such as the Ohio Flint Glass Co, the Model Flint Glass Co, the Cooperative Flint Glass Co, the Richards and Hartley Flint Glass Co, McKee & Brothers Flint Glass etc were still making pressed flint items as late as 1907; ref "Encyclopedia of Antique Pattern Glass" (Kamm-Wood 1961). The "Collector's Encyclopedia of Pattern Glass (McCain 1994) also lists dozens of patterns by the same firms. The "Warner Collectors Guide to Pressed Glass" (Grow 1982) compares soda-lime and flint glass as materials, and their periods of dominance. The "Glass Value & Identification Guide" (Warman's 2002) states that some pressed patterns are found in both flint and soda-lime.

However - despite some authors above using "Pattern Glass" to describe all pressed glass with a pattern - it's probably most proper to narrow "EAPG" to include only glass made in multiple forms with one distinct pattern eg. a table setting. Which would still include many of the flint patterns found in the above.

This is in line with "American Pressed Glass 1825-1915" (Husfloen 1992) pg28+ which indicates that the Lacy period of pressed flint glass can be excluded from "EAPG" because, though patterned, it wasn't typically a line comprising an easily-recognized design in a number of matching forms. But following that there was an increasing emphasis on coherent pattern lines, produced first in flint. Husfloen details the so-called Colonials pattern of ~1845-1865 and says "By the end of the Civil War, many American households [had] at least a four-piece table setting [of] flint glass."


As for "the content of the books by the authors mentioned":

---------------
Early American Pattern Glass 2nd Ed (Reilly & Jenks) pg 7:

"American Pressed Glass chronologically falls into three well-defined periods. (A) The Lacy Period. (B) The Flint Period. (C) The Non-flint period." These authors do, like Husfloen, narrow "EAPG" to mean pressed items in a pattern extending across at least a 4-piece table setting. But that occurred in both the flint and non-flint periods. The authors describe many lines of flint, beginning around 1850. See pg14: "The majority of EAPG [is collected by] pattern [because] this is the way that pressed pattern glass production evolved in the 1850s [i.e.] mass production of many different forms in the same pattern. [Eg.] Bellflower, the earliest pattern produced in a wide variety of forms [is] from the flint period of EAPG production." They list other early flint patterns as Horn of Plenty, New England Pineapple and Early Thumbprint, Cable, Bulls Eye and Diamond Point, Washington, Diamond Thumbprint, and Magnet and Grape with Frosted Leaf.

----------------
Early American Pattern Glass 1850-1910 (Jenks & Luna 1990) pp xiii, 26 etc

This has many examples of flint pressed glass patterns that came in a range of forms comprising large table sets, and which certainly qualify as EAPG. Argus, Ashburton, Bigler, Blaze, Brilliant, Buckle... etc. Flint is of course in the minority in this later period but still very present.

-----------------
Early American Pattern Glass (two books) (Metz 1978)

Lists dozens of flint patterns, many of which comprised multiple forms eg. goblet, spooner, butter, compote, pitcher, creamer so are by any definition "EAPG".

 

Wow.
I wouldn't start it for more than $10. A new collector may be interested.

 

Why? Just because of the chip? Any idea of its era and / or family? I don't hope for a pattern name but even a period eg. "Georgian" or "Victorian" etc.

 

Yes. On very detailed cut glass pieces chips are less noticeable more acceptable.
I would buy a piece like this to use it, not as a display piece, and therefore would be more likely accept a chip on the base than the rim.
I'd go with Victorian.

 

Aarone, I yield, but.

The Flint Glass companies you mentioned made brilliant clear (they claimed) lime glass. (Check their dates of production) It may have been called "flint" because it was clear, without color. It 's main constituent was lime compounds, not lead oxide, the main constituent of flint glass (up to 60%). When lead became expensive due to its use in firearms (during the Civil War) other constituents (lime) were found to take its place in glass.

 

The amount of lead in fine glass is a complex subject and most glassware collector books don't go into that. They speak of broader categories eg. "flint" or "non-flint"; terms that are not scientific.

Of course by the mid-1870s most pressed glass patterns were made with the revolutionary new soda-lime formula. And many firms reused earlier flint-era molds / patterns for this. But such glass is called "non-flint". I haven't found any source saying that post-Civil War glass sold as "flint" had a significantly lower lead to soda ratio. It just looks like far less of that glass was made.

This link has an 1890 recipe from the Dithridge Flint Glass Works in PA. It shows 33.5% lead oxide:

https://cutglass.org/BrilliantGlassEduc/A Guide to ABCG - Jim Havens/Part 1 Havens/composition1.htm

That goes on to note that this is the same percentage as other glass houses still making similar products, and happens to match the average value for "lead glass" for the whole eighteenth, nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries. Which is consistent with info on:

http://www.theglassmakers.co.uk/leadoxide.htm

So - there was / is a lot of flint EAPG, as those terms are commonly understood.

 

Correction: I now have found info that some post-Civil War glass sold as "flint" had no lead in it. The "Encyclopedia of Antiques" (Negus 1983 pg 371) says that the British firm Sowerby's, mass-producing pressed glass at the end of the 19th century, still used that word to denote any of their products in clear glass, though by then it had no lead.

Sowerby's wasn't making Early American Pattern Glass but they couldn't have been alone in this. The practice may well have been common in the US too.

So it looks like there were what we might call boutique firms still producing traditional flint glass (at least a half-dozen firms in the US) to the end of the century, while probably more and larger producers made pressed glass that was flint in name only, which is consistent with your statement.

Still lots of true flint EAPG from both before the Civil War and afterwards, though in much smaller numbers latterly.

Just in passing I would think that non-lead glass originally sold as "flint" wouldn't be identified as such today because it doesn't ring, which appears to be the primary way to distinguish between soda-lime and flint.