Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Rande Bly discusses red.

I found a little more on a color called Cadmium Selenium Ruby. Rouge Flambé is made from cadmium and selenium with soda lime glass. His Selenium Ruby is made from selenium.

Gardner on page 82 paragraph 4 says ” Steuben’s other standard ruby (ruby without gold content?) was made by the addition of cadmium selenide plus zinc sulfide to the glass batch. Selenium Ruby is also a colloidal glass system. This formula produced the rich red color found in most of the uncased items. Occasionally this glass developed an orange tint in areas such as the end of handles or places where variations in temperature occurred during manufacture.”

Gardner went on to present the possibility Cadmium Selenium Ruby could be the same as Selenium Red. I think it is the glass I am featuring. What I am seeing described is a lead glass that is somewhere in between Rouge Flambé and Selenium Red. We can read into this that there were cased items. We know Rouge Flambé was a 1916-1917 production inspired by Chinese porcelain. Then around 1926 we find original color ads depicting a Rouge Flame advertised in table ware.

Ericson describes a plate that looks like Rouge Flambé but different with an unstirred swirl that looks like alabaster. He chose to call it Cardinal Red. I have harped about selenium jade for 30 years.

OK, I have been chasing this phantom for 40 years and surely it will be the death of me. I introduced it to the club in 1999 and we have had lengthy discussions on it with great interest and participation. Three years later we have made some progress so I will give the update and show pictures of possibilities to ponder. I will show 3 different optic ribbed plates, all different shades of the same color. Also shown will be a small Posy vase from Mr. Carder’s desk Frank Blake has given the history of. Also shown is a vase in the Chinese style that is cased. As the story goes Frank said ” The Posy vase sat on Mr. Carder’s desk to remind him of the difficulty of this color and the inability to control it.

The deepest red plate is signed and in the collection of David Chadwick-Brown in San Diego. Marshall and Alan have both had the opportunity to see it in person. Marshall’s opinion was that it was Steuben and it looked as if it “might be” Rouge Flambé. (I imagine a cadmium selenium ruby would look like Rouge Flambé because of the very similar ingredients.)

The next deepest red plate sold at Julia’s as Steuben.

The third plate showing the most orange went through eBay. This plate clearly shows the shading from orange to red and the difficulty controlling it.

The Chinese style vase is with paper label signature and from the collection of Jane O’Donnell. She got it from another major Steuben collection. It is cased with clear crystal. A member of the club reported via the Gazette he clearly recalls seeing a vase in this color at the Corning Museum with the clear casing. I also have memory of a clear cased piece in this color I saw there when I was 19 years old some 40 years ago.

These are some pretty impressive first hand reports on this color from some sources that have reputation and are quite skilled in the field. This is just one color we have not gotten to the bottom of yet. Here are the pictures to enjoy and ponder.

Is this red jade? Cardinal Red? Rouge Flambé? Rouge Flambé? Selenium Jade? Tommy Dreiling’s Steuben Orange? Cadmium Selenium Ruby? Or is it a fleeting red phantom never to be caught?

Personally I am leaning toward Cadmium Selenium Ruby/Cardinal Red. One of the rarest colors of all in nature is Cardinal Red. It only comes in two forms. A bird we all know and one fish. I think it was just as rare with Carder also.

Rande Bly

www.cardersteubenclub.org

2012 Carder Steuben Club annual Symposium will be held at The Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, NY from September 20-22, 2012.

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