The Authenticity Problem

(Jump straight to the "Identification Cheat Sheet")
note: all links open in a new window

Most likely you are reading this newsletter because you buy online, and anyone who buys online instinctively knows the benefits as well as the pitfalls. The benefits are obvious; very convenient, open 24hrs, access from anywhere, easy to comparison shop, huge selection, and buy with the click of a button. When it comes to vintage glass in particular, one big pitfall has the potential to be a deal-breaker; the source must be trustworthy enough and knowledgeable enough to supply accurate information – you want the item you receive to match or exceed your expectations and to know that if it should fall short, you have quick and easy recourse to correct any problem.

In this newsletter I tell you how I identify and authenticate the type of glass that I sell. I will give you specific tips to properly identify vintage glass and thereby help you protect yourself when you choose to buy from any source.

Without the ability to see and handle items in person even experts can be fooled when buying online – yes, this is a confession, I have made such mistakes. As a dealer, these mistakes are the unavoidable cost of doing business. Should I have been unfortunate enough to have mistakenly purchased a piece that is truly worthless to me, I thank my local charity for taking it off my hands. Should I be slightly more lucky and have purchased something that is of some value but not what I expected or deal in, off to auction if goes, usually courtesy of the great internet dump yard known as ebay. Of course on rare occasion I have been known to take advantage of ebay for cross-marketing, listing great items in order to draw new eyes to my website. Often these new eyes are thrilled to find a more reliable and higher quality source than ebay.

When you run a website selling items that can also be found on ebay – and what isn't nowadays? - ebay is the 10,000 pound elephant in the room, so to speak. Customers who find me can more easily find ebay; my marketing budget is after all, much smaller. Why does this not bother me? Ebay loses customers to me, not the other way around - if ebay is kindergarten, I am a Masters program. Aside from the fact that I have successfully run my website for five years and dealt privately for ten, I believe that I simply provide a different service, a better service and more service than any of my competition. Of equal relevance, accuracy in authentication is a core concern of mine – and it's a concern that I know my customers share and recognize in my website.

Authenticity is not every seller's core concern however. When buying from any group or auction website like ebay, it is best to remember what they want you to forget; you are not dealing with one company or one seller, as ebay will tell you if you complain about a transaction gone wrong they are "only a venue" (click here to read ebay's full excuse). If you buy on ebay you are doing business through a large generalized company with thousands of small, casual sellers who need no qualifications other than having access to a computer and a credit card. No group site or auction site I know of verifies or authenticates what people sell on their site and ultimately none will guarantee that you will get what you are expecting.

Recently I had a dialogue with the proprietor of a major online store specializing in glass, I pointed out that of the dozens of items dealers had listed on this person's site as Blenko only two were in fact authentic. I outlined a simple and elegant solution, but the owner's response was, in effect: "Tough luck, I'm not interested in even trying to fix the problem." So then where does this leave you when you buy online? Exactly where everyone before you has been for centuries regardless how they are buying; educate yourself and buy only from reputable dealers, from authoritative (published) dealers, and get everything in writing with a guarantee. From me, a guarantee is automatic and provided with each sale. My policy is simple (I learned this policy from a very successful company I worked for in high school); if you are not happy, I gladly take it back, for any reason and at absolutely no cost to you. But I do everything I can to avoid problems to begin with by authenticating and describing items as accurately as possible.

Above all I spend a great deal of time on research and I publish this research to simplify things for you. "Research" means much more than buying the latest "collectors" book or price guide. I am highly critical of these books even though I understand they are important in generating initial interest. But these books (even the ones I have contributed to) are full of errors and bad information. This is sadly inherent to their production process and low prices. Did you know that most of the "experts" in these books need no credentials beyond the willingness to write and supply photos for free? To say the least, scientific peer-reviewed and annotated journals theses are not.

Arguably worse are single-author price guide books whose academic and editorial standards are often nonexistent. The publishers are perpetually trolling for "experts/collectors/dealers" of the flimsiest credentials who want to either inflate the value of their collections/inventories or get an ego boost. In exchange the publisher gets more cheap books to flog - and they require a perpetual supply.

The next time you pick up a price guide or collectors books, take a minute to note the ratio of text to images, and then skim the text for factual, non-descriptive information, preferably with citations; typically you will find this lacking. My advice; beware of any book with a price guide. Focus instead on books by reputable publishers such as Rizzoli, Skira, Taschen, Arnoldsche, etc. Look at an author's credentials, and consider their sources.

Having said that, I am well aware that for the glass I sell there are few (for The Blenko Glass Company ) or no (for Empoli glass) accessible and reliable books. This leaves many people searching the internet for resources. Particularly if you have heard of the controversy surrounding Andrew Keen's book "The Cult of the Amateur: How today's Internet is killing our culture" you know to be wary of information on the internet (though I would argue given how inexpensive publishing is nowadays, the internet is not much worse than your average chain book store). There are certainly a lot of junky amateur websites offering questionable information on the internet, particularly for the Blenko Glass Company, as some collector websites attest. Many sites merely perpetuate unsubstantiated myths, conjecture and anecdotes. However, the Blenko Museum's website I endorse wholeheartedly, which should come as no surprise as you should know, in the interests of full disclosure, I am a Director of the Blenko Museum. All this to say, regardless the source, do not accept anyone's claim of "expertise" without question.

It seems that many sellers lack the expertise necessary to realize that there is more to identifying mid-century glass than a "look". A "look" typically evolves over decades or centuries and in many regions and countries. A "look" can be quite misleading. The Chinese and Polish , most notably, have been successfully producing glass with a 1950's "look" for years. In Venezuela they have recently done a very good job of imitating some 1950's Italian cased glass. West Elm, Crate & Barrel, and others, have all sold cased glass in what could be called 1950's styling (see images below) – many in the manner of Holmegaard. Cased glass is a technique (Harold Newman's An Illustrated Dictionary of Glass defines it as "glassware made of two or more layers of glass of different colours") that has been used for centuries; it is by no means exclusive to the 1950's or one region. I personally deal in cased glass from the Empoli region of Italy (in Tuscany, near Florence).

Glass industry has existed in Empoli since the 1200s, though on a smaller scale glass had been produced there since about the 3rd century BC. In competition with Venice this industry flourished under the patronage of the grand duke Cosimo I in the mid 1500's. It is ironic that now it is most often misidentified as "Murano" or " Venetian." Much of the cased glass of the Empoli region, circa 1950's, has a very unique styling with a concentration on a handful of primary forms. In the period of 1920-1970 there were a few dozen companies there producing tableware. Workers and designers frequently moved between companies, and many of these companies can be traced to the ownership of only a few families. Empoli glass was first imported to the United States in great quantity in the 1920's, peaking in the 1950's. Quality and variety of production changed dramatically in the 1970's.

Documentation of Empoli region glass is quite scarce, but I have all the same amassed a great deal. My tools for identification include a database of over 3,000 vintage cased glass designs cross-referenced with documentation and hundreds of items found with original labels. Empoli region cased glass comes in two basic styles. The original style (c. 1920's -70's) is the one most closely associated with Empoli and very much resembles the work of the Blenko Glass Company in terms of thickness and execution. The primary difference (aside from shape) is that most of the glass is either a deep mossy green or both layered and opaque (cased), which Blenko glass never is. Most frequently this is cased in 3 layers: color (opaque or transparent), opaque white ("lattimo" from the Italian "latte" or milk) and transparent colorless. Typically half have pontil marks. The later style (c. 1950's -70's) is much thinner and only 2 layers; either opaque color overlayed with clear or white overlayed with clear color. This later cased glass rarely has pontil marks.

Identifying vintage Blenko glass is comparatively easy but, due to its popularity, there is more glass misattributed as Blenko than any of the other glass I handle. With Blenko glass, the matter of authentication is fortunately much simpler and has very little room for error. Many sellers seem to treat "Blenko" as a descriptive term rather than as an attribution, as in "any big, bright glass must be Blenko." The best solution is for the buyer to know what questions to ask. In this case, there is but one golden question: "What is the design number?" Virtually all authentic Blenko glass is associated with a corresponding design number issued by the Blenko Glass Company. From this design number one may determine what year(s) the item was made and in what specific colors and sizes.

When it comes to identifying vintage Blenko glass I rely exclusively on vintage photo documentation for absolute authentication, all else is attribution. Luckily, all of the Blenko Glass Company's products were documented in a sales catalog each year of the Historic Period (1947-74). If one owns a complete set as I do (and as you may), it is a relatively simple matter to identify anything from that period. I do not sell work made by the Blenko Glass Company after this period, as I consider it to be too new and an entirely different beast (read related newsletter). Earlier designs can be more difficult to identify as it is not known with any certainty how many catalogs were produced between 1929-46 and even if in the first years everything was documented. I do however maintain the same standards of authentication for this period and have an extensive collection of early undated catalogs and dated advertisements and other documentation.

To acquire my information I have spent many years doing extensive research at museums, libraries and anywhere I can throughout the country – including multiple visits to the Blenko Glass Company in Milton, West Virginia and in person interviews with the designers (an extended research trip to Italy is clearly in order should anyone care to finance it!). I have shelves full of original research material, and have put this to good use in terms of publishing articles and contributing to books. Many of my articles on Blenko glass are listed on my website's Press Archive page and on the Blenko Museum's website so that you may read them and enjoy the information they contain. The most thorough guide to identifying vintage Blenko glass can be found on the Blenko Museum's "Identify" page.

Authentication Cheat Sheet:

•  as with any vintage item, look for signs of use; the underside will typically exhibit "wear", fine lines on the bottom edge that makes contact with tabletops

The Blenko Glass Company

•  So-called "experimental" = either not Blenko (most likely) OR reject from the regular line (unlikely & almost impossible to prove)

•  the vast majority (but not all) of Blenko glass has a pontil mark on the base

•  most have rounded, fire-polished rims

•  documented in production catalogs,

•  virtually all of the Blenko Glass Company's shapes are associated with a design number, don't buy a "Blenko" design without one & if possible verify it in a catalog! All historic period 1947-74 catalogs available for reference

•  see the Blenko Museum 's website's "Identification" page for comprehensive information

Empoli Cased Glass

•  always opaque

•  usually 2 -3 layers of glass, visible on rim

•  almost all have rounded, fire-polished rims. Avoid polished rims, it is not normal for vintage Empoli cased glass (though common to vintage Scandinavian cased glass)

•  2 different types:

•  earlier (c. 1920's -70's), thick: 1/8"-1/4". Usually 3 layers: color (opaque or transparent), opaque white and transparent colorless. More traditional colors. Typically half have pontil marks.

•  The later (1950's -70's) is much thinner (less than 1/8") and only 2 layers; either opaque color overlayed with clear or white overlayed with clear color. Brighter, more unusual colors. Rarely has pontil marks.

•  avoid cased glass with thick crystal outer layers, particularly when a crystal layer is obvious from the edge of the base; this is often a sign of new production