Alan,

I have a question that has bugged me ever since Bobby Rockwell was kind enough to look at a piece and identified it as Sinclair based on the ground pontil. I look at it and compare with some of my signed Steuben pieces and don’t really see a difference.

What is a ‘correct’ Steuben pontil?

Thanks for all you do for the club,

Jack Hartwein-Sanchez

Answer to Pontil Question

Hi Alan,

Bobby Rockwell here. I’d be glad to help. This information is directly from Bob Leavy. It would be almost impossible to tell the difference between the black ware produced by Steuben and Sinclaire’s unsigned pieces except for two major differences. The Sinclaire people used a much larger pontil grind than Steuben. I can’t remember the exact sizes now, but the Steuben Works tended to use a pontil grind that was about 3/4″ while Sinclaires’ pontil grind was larger than an inch. With the exception of stemware I find that this is almost always the case. Another way is the difference with the applied white rim. Steuben’s method left a rough edge at the bottom rim while the Sinclair pieces were marvered in so that where the white meets the black is perfectly smooth.
Hope this answers your question.

Best Regards as Always,

Bobby