Posted 12 years ago
ItalianGla…
(6 items)
As you may or may not be aware, we LOVE Murano Glass and have turned out passion into more than a collecting habit. This piece dates from around the mid 18th century (1750 or so) and has a typical broken pontil mark which was indicative of early glass pieces where the glass blowers did not have the tools to grind and polish the pontil such as you see on todays modern glass pieces. Heavily painted in 24 carat gold and still with its original stopper, it is a true treasure so we hope that everyone and especially fellow murano glass lovers enjoy this really rare example
thanks for the comments on my blue etui -- love all your cobalt blue -- this piece is outstanding!!!! certainly trips my trigger
hi, this is not that early. you will still find many broken pontil scars on modern pieces as well. the style of gilding and the style of the foot and stopper are not indictive of 18th century glass. this is more like 1950.
Hi Greatsnowyowl
Thanks for your input but I can steadfastly assure you that this does indeed date from the 1750s as it has been researched an verified. I do however know myself that this sometimes does occur and there is less than 1% of all modern pieces with broken pontils. It does not date from the 50s but I appreciate your input
Dean
I'd have just ended this conversation if you hadn't said the less than one percent thing ( and really where do you get your precise numbers?)
Sorry, but that's just not true. Broken pontil scars are indicative of quality of manufacturing not age.
Almost all modern studio glass has broken pontil scars with the snap off pontil rod giving a cleaner finish then before but still broken. Import ware has broken pontil scars a good portion of the time. Victorian era thru the 50's is often found with a broken pontil with lesser quality glass. You cannot date a piece by pontil scar alone. It doesn't work that way.
What a pontil scar does tell you is the quality of manufacture.
A cut and polished pontil means that the piece has gone into the fire at least twice for fire finishing and that the company cared enough to clean the scar up before sending it off. a rough pontil scar means they didn't want to waste man hours on it and that they're cutting corners to get product moved quickly.
No pontil scar at all means that the piece was not put in the fire a second time i.e it's only been worked once. Not as much work went into it, not as high quality.
When judging age of a piece you have to take in all the various components. You can't focus on one aspect only.
While it's true that they didn't start polishing pontil scars until the 1780's that doesn't mean that you can say that rough pontil scars mean it's before that time. leaving the pontil scar rough has been done for many hundreds of years by many many many manufacturers.
beautiful piece -- another cobalt blue lover here also