English Black Glass or Dutch ?

[daltonbottles]

ORIGINAL: whiskeyman

DALTON..I think it's more befitting and appropriate to have moved it to the Historic Bottle topic...Hope you agree.

This is fine with me Whiskeyman. I probably should have posted here to begin with. Great to be included with the likes of Bill Lindsey. I have admired his work on bottle identification with BLM. Great reading. Thanks.

 

[daltonbottles]

Great links Steve, thanks very much ! I guess one of my first concerns would be in obtaining "non-destructive" testing or analysis of some kind on fully intact bottles. Or maybe a n a lysis would work better.

 

[Steve/sewell]

Dalton here are pictures of glass shards from Wistarburgh.Thousands of pieces of dark glass with the familiar Wistar yellow green have been recovered from the glass works site.It is my and other notable collectors that are 100 percent convinced that the glass blowers at the works made plenty of dark mallet type bottles some quite large measuring over 12 inches in circumference.Starting with very dark olive but yet Wistar green yellow mixed in bottom of a deep push up mallet type bottle.I am totaly convinced this color was made here.Was there cullet mixed in from Dutch and English bottes absolutley.Yet I beleive the final product of the Wistar made push up utilty type bottle were similar to English and Dutch bottles of the same time period.With that said Wistarburgh glass is different from the continental bottles of the same time period.Here are a few pictures of a mallet shard the glass measures over 4 inches in bending length.and at least a 3 inch push up

 

[Steve/sewell]

Again the blue halo vein seen through out the glass.

 

[Road Dog]

In case ya'll missed my link. Here is a good discussion on Black Glass.

http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php/topic,226611.0.html

 

[Steve/sewell]

As you can tell from the picture there is a lot going on as for the different colors in one piece of dark glass.

 

[Steve/sewell]

Thanks Rory for the information some real nice bottles are posted.Are you a member at that forum or just a watcher reader of it.
This is one of my favorite shards it is of the window glass made at Wistarburgh again looking at the glass on the flat side it appears as a pale green
but turn it on its edge and the gall can be seen again with hints of the halo like blue green color.

 

[Steve/sewell]

Now the flat side of the glass.

 

[earlyglass]

A spectro a nalysis of each bottle and shard would be nice, but is obviously not practical. I'm looking for any characteristics which can directly be attributed to certain glasshouses. Steve and I have shards from 18th century glasshouses in the US, Chris digs many 18th century privies, countless other collectors have early black glass in thier collections... so what can we determine, other than we are all nuts!? Well, we can post characteristics findings (even minor) just as Dalton's initial post, that illustrate certain telling signs or particular forms, further adding our thoughts about origin, use, etc.

For example, here is a bottle (not necessarily black glass, although that would also be a discussion in itself) that I purchased because of shards from the Germantown factory site which revealed to me to be a possible source of the item. After comparison was made, I determined that the form and size were identical, and pontil marks were used with the same tool. The color is slightly different in density, however, simply a different batch or because the fragments are so dirty! Multiple shards of this form were found at the glass site making a strong determination of the source. Anyways, that is the kind of information I am looking for, wiothout getting too deep into the technical aspects. Steve, I really understand your points referencing the "blue" and the gall and imperfections, however, couldn't this be said with most 18th century black glass? Can you give us particular Wistarburgh markings, such as the base marked gins? By the way, I have large pieces of mallets and even onions that were found at Wistarburgh by Boo Morcom. Production or cullet? Hard to say, but the abundance of them points me in the direction of production.

Chris, as for the Smith bottle... the cylinder form, lip, and placement of the seal tell me that it is probably 1815 to 1820, give or take 5 years. Any thoughts on who might have produced it?

Mike

 

[Steve/sewell]

Chris I have to travel now a little distance,I will be back after dinner, nice looking bottle you posted.From the looks of the shards you provided
looks like a dead match.