Saturday, January 14, 2012

1, Lon Knickerbocker the Treasurer of the Carder Steuben Club reports on his membership drive.

Good afternoon Alan,

Apparently our membership both reads their e-mails and follows our on-line newsletter, or perhaps they enjoyed the Carder colored begging item i submitted yesterday? We have received several dues payments today via Paypal and we acquired a new member, Frank Ford, a long time contributor to the newsletter. Just so the club and the world knows where we stand, Frank is member number 196, we need just 4 more to get to that 200 total. If you have a friend or two sign them up via Paypal and give the gift of membership. You can also join or sign someone up by sending a check in the amount of $35 for an individual membership or $55 for a two person household to the club’s postal box, which i will list the address for when i get done rambling.

No matter if we make the 200 or not this has been fun, my term ends in Sept. of this year and then you won’t have to read my begging e-mails anymore.

Thanks to Frank Ford for being #196 and thank you to the 195 before him.

Lon

2. John Clayton asked yesterday How does a company like Waterford achieve such a smooth (e.g. No rough angles) surface on their expensive cut glass? John a good number of answers.

Alison Robb of Warren, Michigan says
The old glass cutters from over 100 years ago hand polished with wooden smoothing wheels, which smoothed but still kept a sharp edge.
Waterford takes the modern and easy way of acid dipping to remove any cutting residue, which smoothes all of the edges and cleans at the same.

Alison Robb

.
Then Marshall Ketchum responds: It is only a guess but I suspect that Waterford acid polishes its glass.

Then Frank Ford of Shrewsberry, Massachusetts tell us:
Regarding Waterford.

The simple answer is a great deal of their “cut glass” isn’t. It’s molded glass.

Regards,

Frank W. Ford

p.s.—-I think it’s high time I became a member of the Carder Steuben Club !

Finally, Dean Six Executive Director and Curator at the West Virginia Museum of American Glass in Weston, West Virginia adds:

I talk a lot about Waterford as it is such a dominate name in the crystal market of today. Inescapably so.
To many cut glass lovers Waterford is excessively smooth, so much as to remove the desired “cut” finish. They do this by fire polishing. After cutting the piece is hit with flames to soften and smooth the higher, rough cuts.
Waterford’s expertise is in marketing and branding. The real history of the company is so misunderstood by Americans.
The original “Waterford” failed long ago and there was no such creature until a Czech glass worker fled the nationalization of his country with cutting machines and established the new Waterford in the late 1940s. The pattern Waterford cuts are not related to old Anglo- Irish traditional glass as much as the Bohemian- Czech manner and patterns. There are some great books and original archival material available on all of this for those seeking to understand better.

I am perplexed by the desirability of cut glass that is finished to resemble pressed glass- but we all desire different things!

dean six

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Any opinions expressed by participants to the Gazette e-mail newsletters are the opinions of the authors and are not endorsed by or the opinions of the Carder Steuben Club.

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