Harry Pristis
Well-Known Member
Hi Privy the Glass works burnt down in 1846 the first year in business. They rebuilt the very next year. . . .
Harry I don't have any demi johns, and the bases I have found there all seem to have a sand pontil base.
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That's interesting, coldwater diver! I wonder if gaffers didn't have their individual preferences for empontilling bottles or whether the methods were imposed by the factory. Skilled glass-blowers were in high demand, and I suspect they were in a position to use whatever methods they preferred. The Granite Glassworks had an eight-pot furnace, so there could have been eight or more gaffers operating on any given day.
Then there were the other glassworks at Stoddard, the New Granite Glass Works, and the South Stoddard Glass Works, which produced the same wares as the Granite Glass Works with an unknown number of gaffers.
The metal each glassworks produced was loaded with micro air bubbles, according to McKearin & Wilson. Do your finds have the characteristic micro-bubbles?
Here's another demijohn which I think may have been produced in Stoddard at one of the glassworks. In these images, the myriad micro-bubbles in the glass only show up as tiny white flecks best seen in the image of the base: