Clear Hand Blown Glass Pitcher...not sure how to tell if it is new or old?

KStaz81

I just bought this pitcher. The lady told me that it was hand blown...but not sure how old. I just was curious how you tell with hand blown glass the age and if anyone is able to tell how old this is!

Best wishes,

Kelly

BobB

Hand blown? close enough. Blown into a mold by some manner, then the handle would be "applied" (in this case, starting at the bottom, wrapping it up & over to attach below the rim). Before about 1890, American handles would have been applied top-to-bottom, but the bottom-to-top method was apparently easier (read less costly) because only one glassman was needed. Your's seems a little crude compared to the picture I am looking at, but this may be ony because yours seems to be small, a pint or less? To prove whether yours is really blown & not pressed into this shape, you should be able to feel indentations on the inside that match up with each of the Hobnails (the name of this "pattern" is Hobnail). The book I immediately went to is of Victorian-era opalescent glass (because I knew I would find blown-molded Hobnail here); I find pictured several square topped Hobnail pitchers by Hobbs-Brockuner of Wheeling WVa made in 5? sizes from 1889 in several colors & several colored opalescents. Theirs had hobnails all the way up near the lip, the bodies were more globular, and the text says they alway fire-polished the pontil scar on the bottom (yours looks to be raw). The catalog drawings of smaller versions seem to follow the company's style in the bigger ones to accentuate the 4 corners by drawing the corners out a bit while drawing in the sides of the square a bit; yours looks too artifically rigid in a square (but catalog pages can lie about what actually gets produced, especially when trying to scale something down by 2/3rds). [The story goes that pitchers were made in this style so that the server could pour the contents from the left spout or right spout or front spout without having to move around the table; about 5 years ago a potter near me (Oliver Greene, Peter Pots Pottery), who has made blue & brown stoneware since 1953 in a style often described as Scandenavian Modern and "ergonomic", replicated this 4-cornered pitcher in stoneware for pouring pancake batter because the utility of shape gave it simple elegance.] It may have been Hobbs molds that were used about 1899 by Northwood/LaBelle (Ohio) to make similar colored Hobnail pitchers but no pictures were provided of pieces attributed to this output, so we don't know if their hobbs extended all the way to the rim or whether their pontil scar was cleaned up or what the shape was. Through out this period and through the 20th C. the square-topped pitcher was made in other molds besides Hobnail and many of these have been copied (L.G.Wright made some hobnail but I saw no pitchers; Fenton made other pitchers not hobnail; some have come in from Europe?). The color tint of your glass may give you some clues; if you see a little purple or purple-grey cast, it should be OK to claim it was produced before about 1915; if you see the aqua-blue of window glass, be pretty sure its a modern wannabe, -- though a handmade wannabee. Telling something of the age by looking for very fine totally-random scratches on the bottom with a strong magnifying glass might prove difficult with hobbs in the way; some glassaholics are starting to spend more time observing such scratches on the top rim, -- the theory being that any vessel that spends a lot of time carrying liquids around the dining area will have spent a lot time being washed & turned upside down to dry on the kitchen drainboard. Happy glass hunting. --GlassBobB

KStaz81

What a wealth of information you have given me! Thank you! And, yes, I checked and it does have indentations on the inside of the pitcher for each hobnail...Looks like I have some research to do! Thanks for the info!