I’d like to pick the collective brain of the group. I have a couple of pieces that I’m just not sure about. I collect plates. Here is one. I purchased a pair of these plates.

What’s Right: Color of Calcite and Pink are dead on to other pieces I have. Pontil on back. Clearly made by hand. Steuben to me has a certain weight and this “feels” right. 6″ diameter.

What I question. The outer ring (is there a term for this) is flat. Most every other plate I have the outer ring is rounded up a bit. There is a groove, almost as if the plate had a channel cut into the outer edge of the calcite portion of the plate. You can catch your nail on it. I have never seen this. I was thinking that calcite may have been a more difficult color to work. Thank you!

Brad Withers

Some Initial Thoughts

Often one of the first places to begin a search is by looking at the line drawings. The line drawings can be found in Paul Gardner’s The Glass of Frederick Carder. Page 158 shows the profile of many plates. However, the profiles aren’t particularly distinguishable, so that doesn’t help.

Next, would be to see if a similar plate can be found in other literature. You mention a pontil on the plate. Gardner’s text, p. 120, addresses Pontils. The author states: “Sometimes, particularly on plates and heavy flat-bottomed pieces, the entire base of the pieces was flattened and polished, leaving no evidence at all of the pontil’ or perhaps only a slight scar or two may mark the spot where the pontil was. Robert Leavy says the pontils on Steuben plates were small (about one-half inch in diameter), or the bottom was ground flat and polished, eliminating the pontil entirely,…”

In Objects of Desire, The Art of Frederick Carder by Alan Shovers at p. 149 a 17inch Ivory Charger (not Calcite as in the Withers plate) with Applied Mirror Black Rim is pictured. The charger is presently unavailable to be examined, so the rim can’t be examined to see how it compares with Wither’s channel cut description.

This particular charger was pictured in a fabulous photo shoot of Carder glass in Traditional Home magazine in September of 2000, entitled “The Many Shades of Jade”. In Wednesday’s Gazette, the Traditional Home article will be reproduced, as the Gazette has from time to time. Hopefully, others will opine on the plate submitted by Brad Withers with their thoughts, to be included in Wednesday’s Gazette.