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Sandwich Glass: A Technical Book for Collectors cover

Sandwich Glass: A Technical Book for Collectors

Chapter 7: COMPOSITION
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About This Book

A practical handbook for collectors that surveys the development, production, and varieties of early American pressed flint glass made in New England factories. It combines a history of local glassmakers and works with technical explanations of materials, molds, pressing methods, and the distinctions between early hand-blown and later pressed commercial wares. The author catalogs representative forms such as cup plates, salts, candlesticks, lamps, and flatware, describes colors, molds, and identifying marks, and cautions against later mass-produced imitations. Numbered illustrations and a collector’s data section support identification and recordkeeping for the serious student of early American glass.

COMPOSITION

Sandwich glass was made of silex, ash, nitre, pig lead, and other ingredients but the secret of the bright surface on old pressed glass, a characteristic which differentiates it from the modern pressed glass, was the use of barytes. This was introduced into the molten mass and gave the beautiful silver tint that we find in early glass. The New England Glass Company omitted this barytes from its glass with resulting dullness. Its specimens are all crude and heavy in comparison with the lacy examples of early Sandwich.