How to Identify Crystal Glass

hi this is Jennifer with City Farmhouse Antiques and I am here to teach you a little bit about how to identify antique crystal so obviously this is a beautiful piece of cut antique crystal but what I want to do first is start with what we see all the time today which is a regular drinking glass and that helps explain it best so already you can see the difference you can see with the regular glass you can see that it's almost a little bit foggy in its appearance and it's very very lightweight so it doesn't have any lead in it and it doesn't have the clarity that this beautiful piece of Crystal does and so that's because regular glass is a hundred percent recyclable it's made out of recycled glass it's made out of sand and Limestone and soda ash and then of course all those components are heated up and molded into a piece of glass and so I'm just using a drinking glass as an example but it can actually be I mean any kind of glass that has those characteristics so you can definitely see the difference whereas when you're looking at a piece of Crystal and I'm going to bring this beautiful decanter here into the picture this is a beautiful beautiful um Crystal decanter so obviously it's Crystal because we can see the clarity very very clear and very very heavy so crystal glass has a percentage of lead content anywhere from two to thirty percent lead content so the higher the lead content the more the clarity and the heavier the piece so you can even really really see the difference in looking at these two pieces here that this one clearly has a higher lead content this one to the left here is actually a beautiful piece of American brilliant cut glass and so American brilliant cut glass was very very popular back in the mid-18th century it was all the rage in Ireland and England produced in France and then back in the United States this glass became very popular during the 19th century during the what we call the brilliant period and so these beautiful beautiful pieces were made and cut with rotating wheels of iron or stone and you can see how not only does this beautiful piece have a high lead content because it's very very heavy it's got that Clarity but the cuts have all the refractory um characteristics so they are just brilliant so that's why they called it American brilliant glass and there you can see all the facets on the bottom of this piece most of these pieces you know they're not necessarily going to be signed but they're going to be very thick they're going to be heavy here you can see the thickness of this piece they're going to be heavy and they were done in all different shapes decanters bowls dishes console bowls punch bowls just beautiful pieces so I hope that helps give you an idea of how to tell um um you know Crystal versus regular glass as you're doing your searching these pieces should be up on our website at www.cityfarmhouseantiques.com if you don't find something you're looking for be sure and messages in the chat box or message us on the website sign up for our newsletter for all of our latest finds and go back and look at other videos on great tips to how to identify Antiques and different types of glass and we will see you next time

Channel: City Farmhouse Antiques

Views: 45,980

Keywords: antiqueshop, american brilliant glass, cut glass, crystal, identify, antiques, collectibles, glass

Id: yQYpTeNCQTo

Length: 3min 48sec (228 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 07 2023