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Glass Crizzling

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Steven
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« Reply #40 on: April 23, 2013, 11:02:49 pm »

I kinda like it this way, looks like natural stone.Smiley
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« Reply #41 on: April 24, 2013, 12:21:39 am »

George,
    You are right, it looks very similar to mine, except that the cracks are more evenly distributed. You can hardly make out the inside painting.

Steven and Joey,
    Thanks for your comments. I will add more of my cracked glass bottles when I have time. It's good to make collectors aware of this problem. I know from talking to Inn Bok that he has come across similar problems. Maybe others with similar experiences will come forward too.
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« Reply #42 on: May 08, 2013, 03:53:28 am »

Tom,

I attache for your comments, please. Is my SB crizzling ?

I bought this from Zhang Zeng Lou when we met in Beijing in 1992.
The 'cracked' pattern was not there when I bought. They became very visible some 20 years later !
Such phenomon held me back in buying glass-based snuff bottles for a long time. When I began buying Ru Chen's calligraphy bottle,
I was assured of the artificial crystal quality.

Inn Bok


* crizzling SB-2 (1).JPG (147.7 KB, 588x800 - viewed 37 times.)

* crizzling SB-2 (2).JPG (188.63 KB, 598x800 - viewed 29 times.)
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« Reply #43 on: May 08, 2013, 04:10:56 am »

Hi Inn Bok,

If, as you say, the cracked pattern was not there when you bought it and is visible now, I would call that 'crizzling'. The cracking characteristic looks very similar to that on my bottles. It may be caused by internal stresses in the glass, since the cracks appear to penetrate deep into the thickness of the glass. Technically, that may not be called crizzling, which is supposed to happen over a period of several hundred years, and initially be limited to a few microns of surface depth. I'm using the term 'crizzling' loosely to cover the disintegration of the glass, because some of mine have the deep cracks like on your bottle, while others have developed a very fine 'frosting' on the surface.

Some pictures will be posted when I have spare time.
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« Reply #44 on: May 08, 2013, 04:16:53 am »

Tom,

I have some nightmare over such ones, though this happened to an unworked bottle !

Inn Bok
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« Reply #45 on: May 08, 2013, 04:18:03 am »

Sorry Tom, my fingers moved too fast.

The pictures are attached.


* IMG_1190.JPG (111.21 KB, 598x800 - viewed 34 times.)
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« Reply #46 on: May 08, 2013, 04:46:01 am »

Inn Bok,

These look like stress cracks to me - the sort you see on car windscreens. But to keep within topic, we could call it "jumbo-crizzle".
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« Reply #47 on: May 08, 2013, 11:52:41 am »

Technically, that may not be called crizzling, which is supposed to happen over a period of several hundred years, and initially be limited to a few microns of surface depth. I'm using the term 'crizzling' loosely to cover the disintegration of the glass, because some of mine have the deep cracks like on your bottle, while others have developed a very fine 'frosting' on the surface.



I agree Tom ..
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« Reply #48 on: September 01, 2014, 10:07:50 pm »

Hi All,

Here are a couple of shots of one of my overlay glass bottles which has developed "stress cracks" in the 15 years since I bought it. Note that there were NO SIGNS of any cracking during the first 2-3 years after purchasing it. 

Whether this would be classified as "crizzling" or "stress cracking" I am not really sure.

Tom


* IMGP1707-crizzle.jpg (208.21 KB, 602x960 - viewed 27 times.)

* IMGP1709-crizzle.jpg (207.17 KB, 602x960 - viewed 24 times.)
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« Reply #49 on: September 02, 2014, 01:40:13 am »

I would call it 'disintegration'....  and yes i have had my share of these too! 
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« Reply #50 on: September 02, 2014, 06:46:11 am »

Dear Tom,
what a strange phenomenon! It really sounds incredible that in 15 years all this has developed starting from a standard glass. I have never seen this phenomenon on a glass object, including Roman buried glass, 2,000 years old. It must be something wrong in the recipe of the glass or in the way of manufacturing. Thank you for posting these reference pictures.
Kind regards
Giovanni
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« Reply #51 on: September 02, 2014, 10:31:32 am »

Dear Giovanni,
    I agree with you.
    From my late mother's collection of ancient glass, 650 vessels in all, of which  I have 140 pieces dating from pre-blown vessels of 2900 years ago, to Early Arab period vessels 1000 years old; and I've never seen such a thing.
Joey
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« Reply #52 on: September 02, 2014, 11:02:58 pm »

Dear Giovanni,
     You are right, this is caused by poor recipe of glass during manufacture, which is different from the fine surface crizzling found on ancient glass objects.
     These cracks run right through the thickness of the glass, and develop relatively rapidly (5-12 years), while "age crizzling" may take many hundreds of years to develop.  I think Inn Bok and Pat have had similar experience with glass bottles. Inn Bok has attributed the cause to increased demand for glass bottles in the 1980s onwards, when glass production began to be attempted by local provincial centres. 

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Tom
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« Reply #53 on: September 03, 2014, 02:36:28 am »

Yes dear Tom, must be something like that, or a too quick cooling may be.
Kind regards
Giovanni
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« Reply #54 on: September 03, 2014, 03:59:20 am »

Dear Tom,
   In 1978 in Hong Kong, I bought a superb single overlay glass snuff bottle from YF Yang just a few days before the ICSBS Convention there that year.
   It was in deep blue glass overlaid on clear, from the Kang Xi Emperor's Imperial Glass Works in the Forbidden City in Beijing, ca. 1680-1700. The shape was very similar to the Amethyst you just bought.
   Front and back had only a large carp or dragon-carp, swimming towards the neck on one side, and down from the neck on the other, and the footrim was also deep blue glass.
  It had a very fine crizzling on the interior surface of the clear glass body. YF told me that, when the Jesuit missionaries in China started the Glass Works, they had a problem getting the glass mixture right.
  Clare Lawrence (at the time; now Clare Chu), sold it for me in the early 1990s.
  It is illustrated in my 1987 catalogue, #13. A really beautiful bottle.
Best,
 Joey
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« Reply #55 on: September 03, 2014, 04:33:22 am »

Dear Joey,

Thank you for sharing that information. I presume (and hope) that the glass did not get noticeably worse during the years you possessed it.

Tom
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« Reply #56 on: September 03, 2014, 05:00:07 am »

Dear Tom,
   I noticed NO deterioration in the 13 years I owned it, and I was very careful to monitor it since I knew it was slowly deteriorating. But it had only coated the interior surface in the almost 300 years between its creation and my purchase. You could see that the crizzling did not extend almost at all into the thick glass wall.
Best,
 Joey


Dear Joey,

Thank you for sharing that information. I presume (and hope) that the glass did not get noticeably worse during the years you possessed it.

Tom
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« Reply #57 on: October 29, 2014, 06:41:14 pm »

Hello,

I am a new member and had already introduced myself in the Introductions. Aside from the reason to ask the experts regarding my items, the other reason that I wanted to join is because I wanted to share my opinion of why newer glass overlay develop stress crack (crizzling). I would be curious to see what are your thoughts on my opinion. Please note, that I have no background in glass or antiques, it was just that I had an idea while reading this thread and after giving some thought, I came up with the following.

Looking on line at some of these bottles and the examples in this thread, one thing that I noticed is that the carvings have sharp edges and the base material have gouges. I think these are the result of modern electrical rotary tools or vibrational tool's torque.

The high speed/torque that these tools generate, I think creates more of a chipping action instead of a polishing/grounding action. This is similar to old jade carving versus new. (Please note, I am no expert on jade, but I learned bits and pieces from my elders or the internet ) The old way is cut by abrasion and slowly polish the features out, while the new is a diamond drill bit or saw. I heard a carving that took months, can now be done in a day (but horribly). The end result is that the old carve is smooth, round, gradual, flows and comfortable to hold. The new carve is abrupt, sharp, deformed and not comfortable to hold.

When you take a look at the cheaper new carve, you can see chips and fractures where the modern tool just "hacks" away at the jade.

I think a similar thing is happening with the modern glass overlay bottles. Instead of the craftsman's gentle hand (or foot) generated power to polish-carve the overlay, the modern worker just chips away the overlay while damaging the base directly underneath the overlay, and then machine polish the overlay and damaged base to hide the chips/fractures from the unaided eye (or maybe 5x 10x view).

I think, the integrity of the base material is already damaged by the modern tool. So given enough magnification, I think even a newly bought one will show minute chips, fractures and fissure.

Then after a few years of storage where there will most likely be temperature change, the minute damages slowly grows and finally splits wide enough to see. There must also be a point where once reached the damage accelerates. The trigger event can be time, or handling, or closing the drawers.

I also think that glass with bubbles/"snow flake" will expand and contract (versus temperature) at a different rate than solid overlay glass. I have a feeling that old authentic bottles also have very thin overlays and they will most likely not form bands or cover too much of the total surface where the bottle is hollowed internally. So, if the modern bottle have thick overlays that covers a lot of the area or forms a band, then I think this difference in expansion/contraction will also cause the damage from modern carving to accelerate even more.

The camphor or very bubbly kind are most affected, because they are structurally the weakest due the air bubbles and powder added. The milky white glass are not affected (or at least do not show yet) because they do not have that much bubbles.

One thing I learned is to never underestimate the knowledge or wisdom of the past. It is possible that they know what to add to bubbly/snowflake glass to make it expand/contract at the same rate as the overlay. Or they know how thick, how much, what form of overlay to leave that will not hurt the bottle 100 years from now.

If I were working in the palace workshop or for any nobles/royalty, I know my life (maybe even 9 generations) depends on my bottle not cracking. Can you imagine what will happened if the emperor or one with royal "heaven's son" blood, has his hand scratched by a stress fracture?   Shocked

Well, just my 2 cents. Please don't worry about hurting my feelings if you disagree, I was an engineer so seeks out and thrive on constructive criticism.

David
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« Reply #58 on: October 29, 2014, 07:18:25 pm »

Certainly a possibility David !

You have given me something that will be lingering in the back of my mind as I look at overlays in the future.. I will be magnifying to search for very small "starter" cracks.

Your thoughts about the "hacking" away, especially when the lapidary/artisan first starts out with extra course abrasives power tools strikes me as possible. Because I have seen this first hand on some fragile minerals.. One that comes to mind is obsidian which reacts to very much like glass..

Great post, and thanks for giving me something to consider as I look at bottles in the future..

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« Reply #59 on: October 29, 2014, 09:08:57 pm »

Hi George,

I am glad you find that thought useful. If that thought is valid then the intersections between overlay and base might be interesting to see. Especially where there is a gouge on the base. Another potential is where there is a sharp angle on the overlay, like dragon's claw or 2 lines intersects.

I just noticed I did not mention the point that started this idea. I think it was your comment regarding cracks starting at the neck. I then noticed that some of the cracked overlay bottles have an "indented neck" instead of a straight neck. So, if they quickly grind/lathe that shape out, then that place will be weak. Which will then be further weakened by the stopper applying constant pressure while in it. And the torque or push/pull when placing and removing the stopper.

Even if not indented, I think when they make the neck smooth/flush, similar damage might occur.
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