Knowledge base

An alabastron is a small type of perfume bottle that was common in ancient times. It was usually made of earthenware, but sometimes one finds glass vials made around a core.

What is Antique?
There are several hypotheses about the definition of what is antique:
1) the most hangable answer is anything 100 years old
1) yet there are many reservations about this and the above is reduced to what is 100 years old, in combination with the fact that it must be an object that was made by human hands.

What is an amphora?
An amphora is a Greek pottery model consisting of a jug with two handles on a foot. It was used for storing liquids. From Roman times, amphoras were mainly made of glass.

A baluster glass is a type of drinking glass with a stem in the shape of a baluster. A baluster is the swollen ornamental shape known in architecture as an element of the balustrade. Baluster glasses were mainly made in England.

Capture glass is glass that consists of two or more different color layers. The outer layer or layers are usually partly ground away, creating a multi-coloured decor. The technique was used in Roman times and rediscovered in the 19th century in Bohemia and England.

Cameo glass is glass with two or more layers. The decoration is created in different colors by grinding away the outer layer. The cameo technique, best known for stones and shells, has already been used by the Egyptians and the Romans and was brought to fruition again in the 19th century.

What are flutes?
Flutes is an ornamental pattern of the cut glassware. It consists of parallel vertical grooves that can be rounded or pointed at the top.

What is Cire Perdue?
The Cire-Perdue is used in various art movements. Literally translated it is 'lost wax' technique. A metalworking process. e.g. the bronze casting. A model of the desired object is modeled in wax and then covered with a heat-resistant material, e.g. clay. After melting and removing the wax, the mold could be filled with molten glass.

Enameling is a technique that is used in both glass art and goldsmithing. It is a technique in which fine powdered glass is mixed with metal oxides. It is then applied to the object and burned into the object by heating.

What is Etching?
Etching is a decoration technique in which the unshielded parts of an object, eg a glass wall, are exposed to the action of hydrofluoric acid. Depending on the length of time, this results in a glossy, matted or roughened surface.

What is Eglomise?
Eglomisé is a decoration technique used to paint on glass, usually in gold leaf or silver leaf. The painting was applied to the back. A representation was engraved. The decoration was covered with lacquer, metal foil or an extra gloss layer.

What is an Egg List?
An egg frame is an ornamental motif consisting of a frame of ovals, sometimes extended to short ribs. It was borrowed from 17th century silverware.

Filigrain is a decorative form derived from silversmithing. Opaque white or colored glass threads, embedded in clear glass and arranged in fine network patterns.

A la façon de Venise = literally: in the Venetian style. It is a term that was used all over Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries for fine and precious glassware.

Favrile glass is a type of glass in Art Nouveau style. It was developed by Tiffany in ca. 1892 and may have been inspired by the irritation caused by weathering in antique glassware.

Fool glasses were designed in such a way that it was an art to drink them empty without spilling. In the 17th century they were a popular party game: spilling one drop meant that the drinker had to start over with a full glass.

Bottle glass is raw, naturally tinted (green or brown) glass that was used to make glass bottles from the mid-17th century.

Frittes are fused and then pulverized glass fragments, which are added in powder form to a glass mixture to promote meltability.

Cut glass is glassware decorated with facets and grooves cut into the surface with a stone or metal grinding wheel. The grinding technique, which was already used before Roman times. It developed strongly in the English and Irish glass industry of the late 18th and 19th centuries.

Engraving is the application of decoration to the glass surface by notching with the tip of a diamond or with a grinding wheel.

Grisaille exists in 2 meanings:
1) It is a painting on glass in gray tones, sometimes used to create the illusion of sculpted relief.
2) It is also a brownish dye, made of iron oxide, which was used as a fire paint for painting details on stained glass windows.

Hochschnitt literally means: 'high engraving'. By grinding away parts of the glass wall with a grinding wheel, a decoration in high relief was created. The technique was practiced under the Romans and reappeared in Bohemian and German glass art of the late 17th century.

Humpen are a German drinking glass type of large cylindrical beakers (up to 60 cm high) on a slightly protruding and indented foot, sometimes with a loosely attached foot ring, which were usually decorated with enamel painting. The goblets, used for beer or wine, were produced in the German glass centers from the mid-16th to the 18th century.

Intaglio is the carving of a decorative representation under the surface of a glass wall, so that the decor is drawn in deep relief against the glass surface.

Ice glass is a decorative type of glass with a crack pattern reminiscent of ice. It can be made like this or it is created by briefly dipping the red-hot glass in cold water and heating it again and blowing it out. A third method is by rolling the hot glass body over a bed of glass splinters that are then melted onto the glass wall in the oven.

A claw cup is a type of cup made of blue or green glass, made in the German lands from the 5th to the 8th century. The cup tapered towards the base and was decorated with two or three rows of extended studs, shaped like animal claws.

A button is an ornamental motif consisting of a swelling or a spherical shape in the stem of drinking glasses. The shape is variable and, in addition to solid buttons, there are hollow or bubble-lit versions.

Cold-painting glass is painting decorations on glass that are not burned in the oven, like mail paint.

Crystal glass is colorless and transparent glass that resembles rock crystal, a natural quartz rock. The name is generally used for finely ground glassware with a low content of lead oxide.

Lead glass is a soft type of glass with a high content of lead oxide, invented in about 1676 by George Ravenscroft. The easily processed lead glass gradually supplanted the more fragile Venetian soda glass.

Martelé literally means 'hammered'. It is a decoration technique that was mainly used by Daum and Gallé to obtain a finely structured background against which the decoration came out sharper.

Millefiori literally means 'thousand flowers'. It is a decoration technique that is known from Roman glassware from the 1st century BC and was used in Venice from the 15th century. Thin slices were cut from colored glass rods, which, fused together or embedded in clear glass, produced a colorful pattern.

Studs are loosely laid, ornamental glass balls, which were sometimes extended to a point, claw or proboscis. They were sometimes stamped with a relief pattern (bramble studs) or a mask (lion's head).

Pâte de verre literally means 'glass paste'. It is a mixture of pulverized glass, flux and dye. It is very suitable for pressing into molds and modeling figurines and ornaments.

A pontil is a solid metal rod on which the blown preform is taken over from the blowpipe. This is for finishing the top edge and further processing. When the glass has cooled, it is torn from the rod. The point of attachment then often remains visible as a rough scar on the bottom of the object.

A Rüsselbecher is a type of beaker made of blue or green glass, made in the German lands from the 5th to the 8th century. The cup tapered towards the base and was decorated with two or three rows of extended studs, shaped like animal claws.

A wheel engraving is the application of decorations or inscriptions to the glass surface by moving the object against a rotating grinding wheel.

A rummer is a traditional type of drinking glass in the German-speaking regions. It consists of an oval chalice, a wide hollow trunk that is covered with bramble buds. It also consists of a conical foot that is blown smooth or wound from spiral wire.

A dot engraving is an engraving technique that was specifically practiced in Holland in the late 18th century. By tapping the glass wall with a diamond marker, a decoration was built up from countless tiny dots.

Soda glass is glass in which soda (sodium carbonate) acts as an alkali, instead of potash. The Venetian cristallo is a soda glass.