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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 moulding, but the original technique of cutting glass on an abrasive wheel is still used in luxury products. On 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 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.The best contemporary sources mostly use "cut glass" (especially British ones) as a noun, but often "cut-glass" as an adjective. In the 19th century "cut-glass" as a noun was perhaps more common, as in the first use cited in the OED, from 1845. But Ruskin used "cut glass".
Today, the glass is often mostly or entirely shaped in the initial process by using a mould (pressed glass), or imitated in clear plastic. Traditional hand-cutting continues, but gives a much more expensive product. Lead glass has long been misleadingly called "crystal" by the industry, evoking the glamour and expense of 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 and , and secondly 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.Osborne, 403 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"),Osborne, 403 or surface decoration in enamelled glass or glass engraving. Outside Venice and Spain,Osborne, 153 lighting fittings had not previously made much use of glass in Europe; the enamelled mosque lamp of Islamic art was a different matter.Osborne, 398–399, 403 But cut glass "drops", faceted in a style derived from gem cutting in jewellery, Refraction 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.
Typically the design is marked with paint on the glass before cutting – in England red is usually used.Farr, 107 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.Farr, 108–109 Conversely, if imitation cut glass using moulds is made, the complexity of the mould shapes greatly increases the number of faults and rejects.Farr, 113
A second operation polishes the cut glass, traditionally using a wooden or cork wheel "fed with putty powder and water".Powell, 141; Battie & Cottle, 191 In the late 19th century, an alternative method using fluoric acid was introduced; this made the process of polishing faster and cheaper.History However, it "gives a dull finish and tends to round off the edges of the cuts".Sinclaire, 19–20; Battie & Cottle, 191 (quoted); Farr, 107
Labour was the main cost in making cut glass. Arguing against the reduction of 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".Sinclaire, 11
Islamic art, especially Fatimid art in Egypt, valued bowls and other objects in "carved", that is, cut 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.Battie & Cottle, 40–43; Osborne, 670 Similar relief effects were also achieved even more cheaply in mould-blown glass. The 13 or 14 surviving examples of the so-called 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.Battie & Cottle, 44
Very shallowly scratched or cut engraved glass was revived by at least the Renaissance, but there was very little use of deeper cutting which, however, continued to be used in rock crystal and other forms of hardstone cutting.Osborne, 395–397, 690 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.Battie & Cottle, 84
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;Battie & Cottle, 94; Osborne, 403; Davison and Newton, 40 a high lead content also made the glass easier to cut.Sinclaire, 8
A London glassmaker advertised in 1727 that he sold "Looking Glasses, Coach Glasses and Glass Schandeliers".Davison and Newton, 69–70; History The earliest examples, like that given to the chapel in Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1732, were glass versions of the standard brass designs long used in England, imported or locally made versions of a Netherlandish and north French design style that had been developed since the 15th century.Davison and Newton, 69–70; History Around the mid-century, designs took up the use of multiple faceted pendants, which had been used in the enormously expensive chandeliers of the French court, where instead of glass carved clear rock crystal (quartz) had been used.History; Davison and Newton, 71; History
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."Battie & Cottle, 103 The dominance of cut glass in other lighting devices such as , sconces, , and lamps was never as complete, but all were often made in it.Battie & Cottle, 103–104
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 using lamp oil.Davison and Newton, 68–69
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.Osborne, 403 Especially in the 18th century, cutting was often combined with glass engraving above, and by the 1840s it was popular to have areas of "frosting", rubbing the glass with abrasives to reduce its transparency.Battie & Cottle, 110
Competition from cheaper, but lower quality pressed glass in the cut glass style began as early as the 1820s, and grew greatly in the 1830s,Battie & Cottle, 128 but the British cut glass industry continued to expand. In 1845 a commentator stated "cut-glass is now comparatively cheap".Quoted in the OED, "Cut", as past participle, 3, the oldest usage the original OED could find. The ability of British glass designers to patent their designs after 1842 was a help; the mould makers (often called "die-sinkers" in the trade) were apparently often independent of the glass factories.Battie & Cottle, 110 At least in America, where the cut glass industry was growing rapidly, "cutting shops" were also often, or usually in the 19th century, independent operations buying from the glassmakers. In the 1870s Bohemian cutters began to arrive in Corning, New York, one of the centres of the industry, supplementing English immigrants.Sinclaire, 2–6
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 Bohemian glass was attacking the British market. The previous 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.Battie & Cottle, 112–120; Osborne, 403–404
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...".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.
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.Battie & Cottle, 128 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.Sinclaire, 7, 17
The arrival of Modernism in the early 20th century did not do much to change this, and in 1923 an English expert complained that "to the aesthetic soul cut is still a thing accursed ... a striking testimony to the persistence of Ruskin's influence".Powell, 138 He tried to do a survey of likely owners of 18th-century cut glass such as historic houses, Oxbridge colleges and London livery companies, but found very few would admit to owning any.Powell, 139–140
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.Sparkes, 33–37; Battie & Cottle, 170 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.History
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