The size of a batch

Marshall Ketchum responds:

It appears that Rande Bly doesn’t fully understand some of the processes that Carder used. Cintra, Mat-su-no-ke and Cluthra would never have been made in batches of any size. They started out as colorless gathers from presumably large pots of glass. The colors of glass frit were added from the marver as the piece was being made and in many cases covered by more colorless glass. Cluthra would have been made in a similar way with some modifications to the process. There never could have been a pot of Cintra glass since if the glass frit had been added to a pot of colorless glass it would have dissolved and you soon would have had a pot of a homogeneous color.

Carder’s notebooks seem to indicate that Mandarin Yellow starts out as Bristol Yellow and various heat treatments eventually form Mandarin Yellow. There may have been a time when small batches were necessary but if you happen to have a rather large pot of Selenium Red I can’t see the possibility that a separate pot would be batched with a different formula so that optic pieces could be made.

I did not say that “ripple” was not used in the ’32 catalog. In fact, it is used in the ’32 catalog for more shapes than are found in the factory records. I was only trying to differentiate that ripple was also used in the factory records as well as the ’32 catalog.

There is one area where Rande and I can find some agreement. Rande has indicated a preference for Cerise Ruby rather than Selenium Red. The factory records use the term Cerise Ruby to describe selenium/cadmium glasses. The term selenium is not found. We had a problem when we started the website of how to differentiate between Gold Ruby and Cerise Ruby. Five years ago half the sellers on ebay who were selling Gold Ruby pieces described them as being Cerise Ruby. My solution was not to use Cerise Ruby at all but to just use Selenium Red which may not be fully accurate but is not wrong. The only place that Cerise Ruby is mentioned on the site is in the Colors section where I list the website name used, an alternate name that can be used and the factory name. This sort of thing happens for several colors, e.g. common Blue Aurene was known in the factory for many years as “Cobalt Blue” and we use “Blue-Gray” to describe a color for which we do not yet know the factory name.