Mystery to me, Very Old Pulegoso Murano Bowl I think, any ideas?

[alphagemo]

I've got this Pulegoso Bowl, funky colors for Murano, and it's pretty rough work, not cheap like Chinese, but rustic like when they didn't have as much to work with. I don't know about the Orange, but it just seems old to me. Hope someone can shed some light on this. It actually seems like something made a very long time ago. I've seen some of them, some actually made on Murano which seemed pretty crude, though very ornate, and were made around 800 or 900 AD if I recall. This reminds me of the work on those. Don't hold back or try to be nice, let me have it with your honest opinion, call me crazy or whatever. I can take it : )

It's frothy nice spongy looking pulegoso in clear and orange, cased in clear glass. The pulegoso is uneven and the separation between clear puleguso and orange pulegoso is unclean, meaning they got them on each other and they kind of melded together in places and got over each other in others. I'd be very interested in some educated opinions, or even rude comments, or whatever ... Thanks

[TxSilver]

I don't recognize your bowl, but I wanted to throw Czech into the mix for consideration. I bought a couple of pulegoso vases a while back that turned out to be made by Beranek, probably in the 1930s. I also have a pulegoso swan that I suspect may be Czech that I will be listing on eBay this week as Murano or Czech. I thought I would post a frontal picture for comparison.

Anita

[alphagemo]

Hey TxSilver, you're the first to respond to me here

Nice Swan, I should check out some Czech glass. I've been all into Italian and some North American stuff, unless its neodymium.

One thing about that basket, it has ash in the glass (that's not dirt) like someone did it over an open fire furnace fueled by wood or charcoal.

[TxSilver]

It may be my imagination, but the few pieces of pulegoso that I knew were Bohemian seemed glossier than the pieces that I knew were Murano. The glossiness is what makes me suspect my swan is Czech.

I thought about posting one of my Beranek vases, but didn't want to take the extra kbytes on the group. There is a Beranek pulegoso vase that was like one of mine toward the bottom of http://home.earthlink.net/~verredart...ellaneous.html. They are very nice vases. I read that they are from the 1930s, though later I saw they were 1950s.

Anita

[alphagemo]

That's a nice vase on that link. Some really nice stuff on that page. My piece is glossy because it's cased in clear, and it you can see that it would have a rough texture if it were not. It would be all tiny bumpy bubbles.

I wonder if they deliberately smooth the texture on pieces like your swan.

[TxSilver]

I don't think they smoothe the glass. It is really rough feeling. I wondered if it was the composition of the glass or the annealing process. I haven't owned very much pulegoso, so it could be much of the Murano is just as glossy as the Czech. Some of the AVeM and Seguso pulegoso pieces I have seen in pictures also look glossy. It's good to hear other ideas on these things. Maybe we'll get a pulegoso expert with some good comments.

Your basket made me think Czech when I first saw it. I don't know, though. It is a very pretty piece of art glass. It would be nice if only one company did a certain technique. One important thing I learned so far about glass is that if one company can do a technique, several other companies can do it, too. I used to make a lot of mistakes when I bought because I linked technique with companies. Now I make fewer mistakes... the only problem is that the mistakes are a lot more expensive now.

Anyone want to buy a fake Zecchin 5-spout. Just kidding, of course.

Anita