Ruby glass keenly sought by collectors

Press, 14 May 1985, Page 16

Ruby glass keenly sought by collectors

Collecting)

with

Myrtle Duff

In about 1851 John Ruskin expressed the opinion that the principle that a worker must honour the material he worked with applied most vigorously to those privileged to assist in the manufacture of glass, which he believed to be one of the greatest blessing. He considered that to impair its purity by cutting or flashing was a crime, and chided the industrialists of England for wasting the time of their workmen in cutting glass instead of moulding it when soft. The earliest glass known is of a greenish-blue colour, caused by impurities in its components. Every effort at improvement in those days was towards development of the colourless, clear product so familiar today. This achieved, the makers set about colouring glass deliberately, and to very good effect. Nobody could ever forget the atmosphere created by the world’s great stained glass windows and, on the domestic level, a little colour added to any

utensil is usually appreciated.

One of the most popular categories of glass collected today is the group known as ruby glass. Authorities seem to disagree about the originator of the term, rather an obvious one for rich, red glass but now also used to include a variety of shades from pale pink through a purplish shade to the darkest red.

Douglas Ash, in his “Dictionary of Antique British Glass,” credits Mayer Oppenheim, of the Snow Hill Glasshouse which operated in Birmingham in the mid eighteenth century. But it seems to be much older than that.

Other authorities name Johan Kunchel, a distinguished Silesian chemist bom in 1637, as the first to use the term. Kunchel himself says the process was discovered and named by a Dr. Andreas Cassius, of Hamburg. It is certain, however, that Kunchel was responsible for its commercial production about 1679, when he was Director of the Elector of Brandenburg’s glasshouses. Coloured glass is obtained by melting metallic oxides with the other ingredients, gold being used originally to produce the red shades. The process was known in ancient Egypt. Later it was used by Romans, Bohemians, and Venetians, though production of glass at the Murano factories of Venice had all but ceased until the mounting fashion for coloured glass about 1820 created an upsurge in demand and stimulated a revival.

The new taste for coloured glass spread quickly,

the popular Bohemian products being well to the fore. English glassmakers were not slow to accept the challenge. The repeal of a tax which had handicapped the industry for many years provided further incentive. This enabled them to compete with European glass at the Great Exhibition of 1851, though “The Times” of the day suggested a little unkindly that “the lesson of quality should be more closely studied.”

It is interesting to note that there was no entry at this exhibition from the Murano factories of Venice.

The rapidly increasing wealth of the United States in the nineteenth century provided a ready market for all the latest trends, among them ruby glass.

American industrialists in their turn were quick to make their own version and coined the name, cranberry glass.

At the Canterbury

Museum there is a temporary exhibition in the Visitors’ Lounge relating to “The Grand Tour,” which during the late eighteenth century and through the nineteenth was considered an essential part of a gentleman’s education. We may assume that their ladies sometimes accompanied them as among the items exhibited is a travelling drinking glass of clear Venetian glass, flashed with ruby, and with stag and hound decoration.

Such vessels were “shaped to fit into a gentleman’s pockt or a lady’s purse,” and were used to take the waters at the many famous spas boasting cures for various ills.

The glasses were favourite souvenirs of the Grand Tour, as no doubt were two

otheer examples of ruby Venetian glass shown in the same case.

During a search around Christchurch for ruby or cranberry glass I discovered that its popularity was such that examples seldom remain long on the shelves, and are not so frequently available as previously.

Those illustrated are from Village Bygones, in Papanui Road. They include an elegant, ewer-shaped decanter in ruby glass with clear glass stopper and handle, and three of a set of six glasses of more modern extraction, ruby red inside but with a golden lacquered effect on the outside. The decanter dates from about 1860.

I am sure fine ruby glass may be found during a tour of local shops, but time was

pressing so I concluded by own search with a visit to the Ann-tiques Gallery in Gloucester Street where most things may usually be found. I was not disappointed. There were a few pieces there, though again I was told that they are now somewhat harder to come by than a while ago. The genial presence of Mr R. G. Bell is sadly missed from this establishment, and I hope he knows how much we have all been thinking of him during his recent, prolonged illness.