Fakes
These are innumerable, and belong to all periods, old and modern, since Irish glass first became popular.
No glass in the world has been so much copied, and none has, in the long run, stood out so successfully in defying the faker. This constitutes one of the great attractions of Irish glass to the collector, for though many imitations of it have been made of sufficient excellence to deceive the inexperienced and unwary, it cannot be copied sufficiently well to deceive the connoisseur.
The finest reproductions from France, Belgium, Holland, and even Germany, all fail in colour and texture, though some of the cutting is exceedingly clever.
At the present moment there is an enormous amount of spurious glass on the market, and some time ago a lot of remarkable copies were in circulation. They were the best that have yet appeared, especially the urns and candlesticks, and numbers fell into the hands of the unwary. One special weakness, however, was very noticeable—the colour fell in the tall pieces, leaving the tops whiter than the bases.
At the present moment some very clever reproductions from Bohemia are arriving in England, but they are very light and have a peculiar pink tinge, which is more specially noticeable in the larger pieces.
As has already been pointed out, nearly all Irish glass is heavy, and a very large proportion of the modern fakes fail to attain the required weight. A marked exception to the general rule of weight is to be found in Irish blown specimens, produced from about 1735 to 1750, which were very light, and only engraved or quite plain, never cut. The faker frequently forgets the latter point. When, however, he remembers it, and produces plain or engraved pieces similar to the Irish, there is yet another point of distinction. The Irish pieces often show air-bubbles, but never the little specks of sand which, as I have already said, almost invariably appear in the metal peculiar to foreign glass.
Difference of Colour
The most important distinction between Irish glass and foreign imitations is to be found in their colours, and in this respect it is the early glass of Cork, Waterford, and Dublin that defies the copyist more than any other. Its steel or grey-blue tone stands alone, although, alas, imitations artificially coloured with thin cobalt and ultramarine have been, and in all probability will continue to be, sold as the genuine article. In the analysis of Irish glass there is no trace of cobalt.
Some copies of an almost emerald green have changed hands in good faith as Waterford glass. How could green be produced from lead oxide, potash, soda, and silica?—for this is the analysis of an early piece of Waterford “pot metal” glass of the dark grey hue.