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Crystal
hen delving into a new cat- egory of buying and selling, the learning curve can often be a bit intimidating. Understanding the W A beginners guide to buying and selling crystal By Michael and James Fry Fundamentals
Brilliance: A piece of crystal—especially when it’s been cut—will exude a certain type of brilliance similar to a diamond. Its corners will sparkle and if you hold it up to the light you should be able to see a prism or rainbow effect in the glass. Weight: Crystal weighs more than glass. Often when you pick up a crystal goblet or figurine, you might be taken aback by the unexpected weight compared to its size. Sound: To test for crystal use your knuckle to knock lightly on the edge of the piece in question. Crystal gives a higher melodious ping that often will ring for a second or two. Regular glass in contrast will make a plunk sound and won’t resonate. This method works great with any type of drinking glass or vase, while not so great with figurines or some other shapes. If you are unsure of what a crys- tal “ping” is suppose to sound like we suggest
that you visit several high end stores such as Williams-Sonoma on the Plaza and Halls in Crown Center to try your hand gently tapping both their regular glass and crystal and listen the difference in sound. Clarity: At first this might seem like an odd way to identify glass from crystal. After all isn’t the most notable feature of glass that it’s clear? The difference is quite noticeable when you hold similarly shaped pieces of glass and crystal next to each other. The glass piece will seem cloudier and might have a wavy look to it. The image you see on the other side will look distorted. Crystal on the other hand will be quite clear. This becomes even more true with higher-end, higher-quality pieces. You can hold up a 4in. thick Stuben or Baccarat figurine to a book and you’ll be able to read the text. Identifying a piece as crystal is just the first step to understanding if it’s valuable or
nuances of value for many categories can take months or even years to learn. However with crystal, understanding the fundamentals and learning to distinguish it from regular glass can be tackled in a single afternoon. There are four common characteristics that make crystal easy to identify. Once you’ve mastered the fundamentals you can then move on to understanding what makes one crystal vase worth $15 and another worth $1,500. The regular non-crystal drinking glasses in your cupboard are made from soda, lime, and silica (sand). Crystal in contrast, is comprised of soda, lead oxide, and silica. Legally for a manu- facturer to call their glassware “crystal” it needs to contain at least 24 percent lead. As a general rule, the higher the quality of the crystal, the larger percentage of the lead, with some pieces containing upward of 30 percent. The lead serves several important functions, all of which give crystal the attributes that make it special. It significantly increases the reflective and brilliant qualities of the glass. It raises the density, making it considerably heavier than regular glass. Lead also enables the craftsman to work with the molten glass at a lower temperature. This allows them to create unique designs with much higher quality and clarity, with pieces free from trapped air bubbles. To sum up: adding lead into the mix creates heavier, clearer, prettier, and easier to work with glass. The qualities lead imparts to crystal, are the same qualities we use to identify it. Those four qualities are Brilliance, Weight, Sound, and Clarity.
8 vintagekc spring 2016
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