21 Facts About Cut glass

Cut glass or cut-glass is a technique and a style of decorating glass.

Cut glass'storically, cut glass was shaped using grinding or drilling techniques applied as a secondary stage to a piece of glass made by conventional processes such as glassblowing.

Today, the Cut glass is often mostly or entirely shaped in the initial process by using a mould, or imitated in clear plastic.

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.

Outside Venice and Spain, lighting fittings had not previously made much use of Cut glass in Europe; the enamelled mosque lamp of Islamic art was a different matter.

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Conversely, if imitation cut glass using moulds is made, the complexity of the mould shapes greatly increases the number of faults and rejects.

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

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.

From about 1800 to 1840 "almost all British luxury table glass was cut", and the style spread to Europe and North America.

The ability of British Cut glass designers to patent their designs after 1842 was a help; the mould makers were apparently often independent of the Cut glass factories.

At least in America, where the cut glass industry was growing rapidly, "cutting shops" were often, or usually in the 19th century, independent operations buying glass blanks from the glassmakers.

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".

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 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.

An exception is the distinct Japanese style of Satsuma kiriko, which adds a thin layer of coloured flashed glass which is then cut through, giving a colour contrast.

Cut glass vessels remained popular, but an increasingly conventional and conservative taste, little used for art glass, a new term for decorative glass with artistic aspirations.

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.

Cut glass 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.

Traditional cut glass designs are still used, for example in what Americans call the Old fashioned glass, a whisky or cocktail tumbler.

In chandeliers 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.