Alexandrite Glass - Friday Fun Bottle

[cshapiro]

Happy Friday!

When I bought this bottle it looked blue in the pictures, so imagine my surprise when I opened it up and it was a lavender purple! That made me curious, so I took it to my desk to look up more about it and it changed to a cranberry pink in the incandescent lighting! Then I took it to the laundry room that has fluorescent lighting and it was blue! I looked at it under the loop and it's definitely glass, so I found out that there is a color changing glass called Neodymium or Alexandrite glass.

Here's what I found out about it:
Neodymium is a rare earth binary compound and is mostly mined in China. When used in crystal production you get dichromatic or dichroic glass. That is glass that changes color in different lighting conditions. Alexandrite will be a pale ice blue under fluorescent lighting and a striking lavender under incandescent lights.

I am calling the color alexandrite as that is the name given the color by Moser, who invented it around 1930.

So this bottle is really unusual! I just bought it because I loved the Shou symbol and the chilong dragons climbing along the sides - plus it has it's original top and I am pretty certain that the orange ball is baltic amber. The color changing aspect was totally unexpected and a wonderful surprise!

So I'm posting this to see if anyone has seen other examples or can help me find out more about it. I bought it from a seller in England which as I understand was home to some of the glassworks that made this type of glass.

[George]

There has been some kind of color changing glass coming out of China for a while.

Try searching Google for things like chameleon, or opalescent Chinese glass.

Here is an ongoing forum discussion you might read through..
https://forum.grasscity.com/threads/how-does-color-changing-glass-work.492259/

[cshapiro]

Thanks George!
The bottle doesn't appear to have a coating on it - it appears it was the addition of something to the glass itself that causes the effect. But that is something to explore because I imagine a coating could be added to an existing bottle.