Czech Decorative Glass Color Compositions - An Identifying Tool

It is here that I learned the importance of glass color, by a few of the more outspoken Czech glass collectors, years ago. It was the first time that I became interested in making a glass collection, where the Czech maker was ultimately important, yet had not been broached in any solid and established way. Of course, this does not pertain to the better known entities and their many publications.

After all we are not speaking of high value antiques, if soon to be 100 years old. In these export mid to low value categories, makers are nice to know but really don't make any difference in the end, unless you are a very focused collector.

The pieces themselves tell the story, the place of production, the years of production, the fabrication and the designs, the rarity, the condition, and the popularity.

To go back to exact glass colors, an argument was made that our Czech glass producers purchased their colored glass canes from the Riedel firm, which had morphed into a huge glass provider, with hundreds of colors and decors, as well as types of glass from translucent to opaque, to aventurine etc.

My conclusion was that in some instances, it would be possible to identify a producer by the glass colors used, I am talking about complex glass combinations, where six exact colors were consistently used on a dozen decorative pieces, and then the same approach used with other colors, but with the same shapes. I call this glass Ruckl.

A. Ruckl & Sons had a very short span of producing colored decorative glass, they also made clear cut crystal pieces, and industrial red glass items such as for car lights, or for religious church accessories. 1920 to 1938.