Cut glass

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Bowl of a wine glass in typical cut glass style
Cut glass chandelier in Edinburgh

Cut glass or cut-glass is a technique and a style of decorating glass. For some time the style has often been produced by other techniques such as the use of

glassware vessels, the style typically consists of furrowed faces at angles to each other in complicated patterns, while for lighting fixtures, the style consists of flat or curved facets on small hanging pieces, often all over. Historically, cut glass was shaped using "coldwork" techniques of grinding or drilling, applied as a secondary stage to a piece of glass made by conventional processes such as glassblowing.[1]

Today, the glass is often mostly or entirely shaped in the initial process by using a mould (

rock crystal, or carved transparent quartz
, and most manufacturers now describe their product as cut crystal glass.

There are two main types of object made using cut glass: firstly drinking glasses and their accompanying decanters and jugs, and secondly chandeliers and other light fittings. Both began to be made using the cut glass style in England around 1730, following the development there of a reliable process for making very clear lead glass with a high refractive index.[2] Cut glass requires relatively thick glass, as the cutting removes much of the depth, and earlier clear glass would mostly have appeared rather cloudy if made thick enough to cut. For both types of object, some pieces are still made in traditional styles, broadly similar to those of the 18th century, but other glassmakers have applied modern design styles.

Expensive drinking glasses had previously mostly concentrated on elegant shapes of extreme thinness. If there was decoration it was mostly either internal, with hollow bubble or coloured spirals within the stem ("twists"),

gem cutting in jewellery, refracted
and spread the light in way that was new, and were enthusiastically embraced by makers and their customers. The main skeleton of the chandelier was very often metal, but this was often all but hidden by a profusion of faceted glass pieces, held in place by metal wire.

Technique

Czech glass-cutter at work

In the first century AD,

steam power.[7] Today electric power is used. For cutting flat facets a turntable device called a "lap", already used in gem-cutting, was adopted.[8]

Typically the design is marked with paint on the glass before cutting – in England red is usually used.[9] One advantage of cut glass for the manufacturer is that it can very often be arranged for the small flaws such as bubbles that are inevitable in a proportion of glass pieces, and would lead to a clear piece being rejected, to be placed in the areas to be cut away.[10] Conversely, if imitation cut glass using moulds is made, the complexity of the mould shapes greatly increases the number of faults and rejects.[11]

A second operation polishes the cut glass, traditionally using a wooden or cork wheel "fed with putty powder and water".[12] In the late 19th century, an alternative method using fluoric acid was introduced; this made the process of polishing faster and cheaper.[13] However, it "gives a dull finish and tends to round off the edges of the cuts".[14]

Labour was the main cost in making cut glass. Arguing against the reduction of tariffs in 1888, a leading figure in the American industry claimed that "We take a piece of glass .... costing 20 cents and .... in many cases put $36 of labor on it".[15]

History

Chandelier in the chapel of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, donated in 1732, one of the earliest datable cut glass examples. The shape follows contemporary brass examples, with glass branches but no "drops"; only the pieces down the stem are cut, mostly with flat facets.[16]

Technically, the decorative "cutting" of glass is very ancient, although the term "cut glass" generally refers to pieces from the 18th century onwards. The

Ancient Roman glass used a variety of techniques, but mostly large amounts of drilling, often followed by polishing, to produce the deeply under-cut cage cups, objects of extreme luxury, cameo glass in two colours, and objects cut in relief, of which the Lycurgus Cup is the outstanding survivor.[17]

rock crystal (quartz, a clear mineral), and this style was also produced in glass, which was cheaper and easier to work. Cameo glass was also produced.[18] Similar relief effects were also achieved even more cheaply in mould-blown glass. The 13 or 14 surviving examples of the so-called Hedwig glasses were probably made by Islamic artists, but perhaps for the European market. Perhaps from the 12th century, they are either very late examples of Islamic glass-cutting, or isolated ones of medieval European use of the technique.[19]

Very shallowly scratched or cut

hardstone cutting.[20] In Germany in the late 17th and early 18th centuries there was a revival, for "two generations", of cut relief decoration, water-powered and imitating rock crystal. Typical pieces were cups and goblets with coats of arms surrounded by rich Baroque ornament, with the background cut away to leave the reliefs raised. This is called the Hochschnitt ("high cut") style.[21]

In the later 17th century George Ravenscroft developed a cheap and reliable lead "crystal" glass with a high refractive index in England, which various other glassmakers adopted. After some time, the potential of cut glass using this basic material began to be realized;[22] a high lead content also made the glass easier to cut.[23]

Chandeliers

Regency chandeliers in Saltram House
, England

In the early 18th century, bevelled edges to large mirrors became fashionable in England, achieved by rubbing with abrasives, but also by "cutting". The making of "looking glasses" was a different branch of glassmaking from the makers of drinking glasses, and it seems to have been in the former that "the craft of cutting was born", and the mirror makers were the workshops who expanded into chandeliers.[24]

A London glassmaker advertised in 1727 that he sold "Looking Glasses, Coach Glasses and Glass Schandeliers".

rock crystal (quartz) had been used.[27]

Over the rest of the 18th century, and the early part of the next the number of drops increased, and the main stem of the chandelier, typically in metal, tended to disappear behind long chains of them. By the

Regency period there might be "some thirty drops in perhaps six or eight graded sizes, and each drop might have 32 facets on each side. Costs soared."[28] The dominance of cut glass in other lighting devices such as candlesticks, sconces, girandoles, and lamps was never as complete, but all were often made in it.[29]

By 1800 it was already common to dismantle chandeliers and reconfigure them into a more fashionable shape, and subsequently most old chandeliers have been converted from candles to electricity, often after a period as

lamp oil.[30]

  • Oddly-sited Victorian chandelier
    Oddly-sited Victorian chandelier
  • Detail of cut glass "drops" or pendants
    Detail of cut glass "drops" or pendants
  • Large modern chandelier being worked on, Iran.
    Large modern chandelier being worked on, Iran.

Vessels

Wine rinser with cut fluting and engraving above, England, late 18th-century

Starting out by decorating mainly wine glasses, decanters and other

drinkware, by the 19th century cut glass was used for a variety of tableware shapes, mostly those associated with desserts ("sweetmeat glass" is a term used by collectors), and for bowls and trays either for use at the table or in the drawing room. These larger shapes allowed the room for cutters to produce many of the most interesting and characteristic cut designs, which experts can often date rather precisely, as they passed through several different styles. Starting with the Rococo, there were Neoclassical and Regency styles, and finally one with "Gothic" arches by about 1840. The Regency style added to the 18th-century diamond shapes zones with many parallel bands, furrows, or flutes, either vertical or horizontal, initially rather narrow, but later wider, in the "broad flute" style. From about 1800 to 1840 "almost all British luxury table glass was cut", and the style spread to Europe and North America.[31] English cutters were instructing French workers at the Saint-Louis glass factory by 1781,[32] and later Belgian cutters at Val Saint Lambert by 1826.[33]

On wine glasses and similar shapes, the rim where the drinker's mouth would touch was left smooth, but the bowl, especially the lower part, the stem, and the foot might be cut. A starburst on the underside of the foot was common. On jugs, cups for eating desserts from, and bowls the rim was often cut with zig-zags or other ornament.

glass engraving above, and by the 1840s it was popular to have areas of "frosting", rubbing the glass with abrasives to reduce its transparency.[35]

Competition from cheaper, but lower quality

Corning, New York, one of the centres of the industry, supplementing English immigrants.[39]

  • Dessert glass, England, 1760–80
    Dessert glass, England, 1760–80
  • Bowl, 1820–30, English
    Bowl, 1820–30, English
  • Irish jug, early 19th century
    Irish jug, early 19th century
  • English (?) vase, c. 1835
    English (?) vase, c. 1835

1850 onwards

American "brilliant cut" punch bowl on stand, 1895

The centrepiece at the crossing of the Crystal Palace holding the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London was a huge glass fountain (8.25 metres or 27 feet high), including much cut glass, by the leading Birmingham firm of F. & C. Ostler.[40] Cut glass had dominated both its main market niches for several decades, but a number of factors were about to challenge it, at least as far as vessels were concerned. The Victorian taste for over-ornamentation was beginning to take over, and some of the cut glass displayed at the Great Exhibition was described as "prickly monstrosities".[41] In the year of the exhibition, the hugely influential critic John Ruskin, in his Modern Painters, denounced the whole technique, writing "We ought to be ashamed of it" and "all cut glass is barbarous, for the cutting conceals its ductility and confuses it with [rock] crystal".[42]

At the same time, and further stimulated by the Great Exhibition itself, the British style was spreading across the Western world, and in particular cut American and

excise duty long charged on glass was abolished in 1845, which both encouraged the development of exciting new styles of decorating glass, and also made glass cheaper, leading to a flood of pressed glass imitations of cut glass style that tended to devalue the prestige of the style. Nonetheless, cut glass remained a staple in most prosperous British households, and was still widely exported.[43]

In the 1870s the "brilliant", "brilliant cut" or "American Brilliant" style emerged, perhaps first seen in America in glass exhibited at the 1876

Philadelphia Centenary Exhibition: "its most complex brilliant cutting involved covering the glass surface with intersecting cuts that created innumerable, often fragmentary shapes making up larger patterns. Basic motifs used were stars, hobnail or polygonal diamonds, strawberry diamonds and fan scallops...".[44]

Decline

Contemporary Czech cut glass in two colours

The last decades of the 19th century saw exciting new developments in glass design, with much use of colour, the Victorian version of

Arts and Crafts Movement, which both took on board Ruskin's criticisms, and preferred sinuous curving forms that emphasized the flowing, frozen liquid nature of glass.[46]

Waterford Crystal factory in 2001

At the end of the century the market for expensive decorative glass appears to have slumped, perhaps because so much was now being made and traded internationally.[47] Corning's cut glass industry peaked in 1905, when a directory recorded 490 cutters there, and 33 engravers, though the quality of some work was falling; by 1909 the number of cutters had fallen to 340.[48]

The arrival of

livery companies, but found very few would admit to owning any.[50]

But some glassmakers, for example in Art Deco, were sympathetic to linear and geometric decoration and made use of the technique, often as one of a number of techniques used in a single piece. This continues to be the case in the recent studio glass movement. In mid-20th-century England there was a revival in engraved glass, which was often accompanied by some cutting; the work of Keith Murray includes examples.[51] Traditional cut glass designs are still used, for example in what Americans call the Old fashioned glass, a whisky or cocktail tumbler. In chandeliers, however, the clear cut glass style has been adapted successfully to modern styles and still holds its own, especially for large public spaces such as hotel lobbies.[52]

Cut-glass accent

In

Queen Elizabeth II having softened their pronunciation over the years.[54]

Notes

  1. OED
    , from 1845. But Ruskin used "cut glass".
  2. ^ Osborne, 403
  3. ^ Osborne, 403
  4. ^ Osborne, 153
  5. ^ Osborne, 398–399, 403
  6. ^ Powell, 3
  7. ^ Powell, 140–141; Battie & Cottle, 110
  8. ^ Battie & Cottle, 102
  9. ^ Farr, 107
  10. ^ Farr, 108–109
  11. ^ Farr, 113
  12. ^ Powell, 141; Battie & Cottle, 191
  13. ^ History
  14. ^ Sinclaire, 19–20; Battie & Cottle, 191 (quoted); Farr, 107
  15. ^ Sinclaire, 11
  16. ^ Battie & Cottle, 102
  17. ^ Battie & Cottle, 35
  18. ^ Battie & Cottle, 40–43; Osborne, 670
  19. ^ Battie & Cottle, 44
  20. ^ Osborne, 395–397, 690
  21. ^ Battie & Cottle, 84
  22. ^ Battie & Cottle, 94; Osborne, 403; Davison and Newton, 40
  23. ^ Sinclaire, 8
  24. ^ Battie & Cottle, 102
  25. ^ Davison and Newton, 69–70; History
  26. ^ Davison and Newton, 69–70; History
  27. ^ History; Davison and Newton, 71; History
  28. ^ Battie & Cottle, 103
  29. ^ Battie & Cottle, 103–104
  30. ^ Davison and Newton, 68–69
  31. ^ Battie & Cottle, 110–111 (110 quoted); Osborne, 403
  32. ^ Battie & Cottle, 127
  33. ^ Battie & Cottle, 128
  34. ^ Osborne, 403
  35. ^ Battie & Cottle, 110
  36. ^ Battie & Cottle, 128
  37. OED
    , "Cut", as past participle, 3, the oldest usage the original OED could find.
  38. ^ Battie & Cottle, 110
  39. ^ Sinclaire, 2–6
  40. ^ Battie & Cottle, 111; Davison and Newton, 71
  41. ^ An often quoted but rarely attributed description. It certainly appears (without quotation marks) in European Glass: A Brief Outline of the History of Glass, 1926, by Wilfred Buckley and Ferrand Whaley Hudig
  42. Apollo Magazine, accessed 10 May. 2021, online
  43. ^ Battie & Cottle, 112–120; Osborne, 403–404
  44. ^ Battie & Cottle, 1188 (quoted); Osborne, 409: Sinclaire, 13–14. A "strawberry diamond" is a set (usually four) squares inside a diamond, the squares with further ornament inside, example.
  45. ^ Battie & Cottle, 120–123, 128–135
  46. ^ Battie & Cottle, 143–161; Sparke, 31–33; "Wine Glass (England), ca. 1900", Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum; Farr, 108–110
  47. ^ Battie & Cottle, 128
  48. ^ Sinclaire, 7, 17
  49. ^ Powell, 138
  50. ^ Powell, 139–140
  51. ^ Sparkes, 33–37; Battie & Cottle, 170
  52. ^ History
  53. ^ "cut glass", The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus, Cambridge University Press
  54. ^ Robson, David, "Has the Queen become frightfully common?", BBC website, 3 February 2016

References

Further reading

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Cut glass.
  • Fisher, Graham, Jewels on the Cut: An Exploration of the Stourbridge Canal and the Local Glass Industry, 2010, Sparrow Books
  • Spillman, Jane Shadel, The American Cut Glass Industry: T.G.Hawkes and His Competitors, 1999, ACC Art Books
  • Swan, Martha Louise, American Cut and Engraved Glass of the Brilliant Period in Historical Perspective, 1986, Gazelle Book Services
  • Warren, Phelps, Irish Glass: Waterford, Cork, Belfast in the Age of Exuberance (Faber monographs on glass), 1981, Faber & Faber
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