English Black Glass or Dutch ?

[Road Dog]

ORIGINAL: 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.

Hey Steve, I'm a member over there. They have a bit of everything there. The black glass thread here has the makings of one you keep going back to for all the great info.

 

[daltonbottles]

"Black Glass" - What is it and how do we define it ? As Mike says, this could be a totally different discussion in itself. But looking at eBay descriptions and some of the comments on other forum posts, the term black glass seems to be confusing to alot of folks. Some tend to place anything "green" into the category. But the glass color is only one characteristic of true black glass. This primarily entails the olive to deep green, amber green, and amber glass colors. But the real key I think is the color that the glass appears in REFLECTED light, not the actual color of the glass when held to a light source looking through the glass. Black glass is simply a term used to describe glass that appears very dark or black under reflected light conditions. A plain old incandescent light source indoors is really all you need.

 

[jfcutter]

Great thread on black glass! I don't have much to add to it at this moment except to note that I agree to the definition by daltonbottles of what black glass is, i.e., glass that appears essentially black when viewed in reflected light (like on ones bottles shelves in a room, not in the window with the sun behind it). For example, the darkish green bottles in the image below are primarily not black glass to my eye, with the exception possibly of the small umbrella ink to the lower right.

I have to admit that I've not addressed the subject of 18th-century American-made black glass bottles (largely spirits & utility bottles) much on my Historic Bottle Website (HBW) since it is a minefield of speculation and very hard to be certain of with very few exceptions. I essentially "punt" on the subject by starting the website discussion around 1800 - around the time when American bottle making really took off - and by primarily only covering American (and some Canadian) made items. I largely avoid most foreign bottles since the HBW is long and complicated enough just covering the vast variety of bottles made in this country.

Certainly early American glass factories were making bottle which emulated Euro-wares of the period, but that is the problem...they look the same pretty much as noted in this thread. However, this thread has been educating me a lot on early American vs. European bottles...keep it up!

Bill

 

[jfcutter]

I should also add this from McKearin & Wilson regarding black glass (lifted from my HBW):

Black glass is probably "...the most important of the green glasses..." which "...was of so deep a color as to appear black in reflected light and even in direct light when the walls of the bottles were very thick..." according to McKearin & Wilson (1978:9).

Bill

 

[Steve/sewell]

This jug measuring 11 inches in circumference at the base and standing exactly 12 inches in height was found 75 feet from the Stangers glass works
during the reconstruction of US.Rte. 322.The top of the bottle has the very German influenced sheared top not usually seen on Dutch and English black glass
bottles.The color is golden olive amber.The turlington bottle was used strickley for size comparison.I would like to think this bottle was made right there on Stangers property as at one time they owned 5 square miles of land with the glass works,General store and later in 1790 Colonel Hestons Mansion to keep an eye on the glass works.The bottle looks to be from the 1780 to 1800 time period.

 

[Steve/sewell]

picture 2

 

[Steve/sewell]

Picture 3

 

[Steve/sewell]

Picture 4

 

[Steve/sewell]

picture 5

 

[Steve/sewell]

Last one. The pontil sort of resembles a foreign galaxy.