BRIEF HISTORY OF CRYSTAL PRODUCTION

Crystal has been executed or manufactured for over several hundred years throughout Europe. The English were both renowned and revered by competing countries for their high quality of crystal production for centuries.

VICTORIAN CRYSTAL DECANTER

VICTORIAN CRYSTAL INKWELL

Let us not forget about Italy which led the world in production of all kinds of glass for many centuries as well. One of the biggest competitors of English crystal production was Bohemia. Again, for many centuries Bohemia was one of the world’s largest producers of glass and crystal. 

Of course the normal thing for other countries to do was to create the best possible products that money could buy including chemists, glass cutters and designers. After all without the skills of these chemists, glass blowers, designers/modelers and cutters, there would be no glass products for sale.

Richer factories employed the best of skills provided by these artisans. The power of production depended on these various skilled craftsmen.

Each country boasted of its quality production. The truth of the matter is that each of these European countries produced great glass and crystal of superior quality due to the fact that they equally had great chemists, modelers and designers that were constantly trying to discover new innovations in the production of better and better glass as the decades and centuries passed.

Of course, every country can boast of having had and presently have supreme glass makers.

Name dropping is a commonality for most writers who are prejudice about a specific kind/type of glass and/or crystal and who are native to a particular region or country.

George Ravenscroft, who emigrated from Italy, established his own glasshouse in London as early as 1673 and shortly after patented a process for making "flint glass" or “lead crystal”. Ravenscroft found that the addition of lead to glass during the melting process improved the quality of the glass.

Glass houses elsewhere in Europe thrived throughout the 1800s when Baccarat in France, Val St. Lambert of Belgium, Egermann in Bohemia, Orrefors in Sweden, Swarovski in Austria and Waterford (1783) in Ireland (just to name some), became leading lead crystal manufacturers.

During 1850-1900 many of the European glass artisans, including designers and cutters, were being employed by rich American Glass Houses such as Gorham, Hawkes, Libbey, Pairpoint and Dorflinger just to name several. These with many other very important American cut glass factories at the time led to some of the best creations in glass cutting in history which became known as the “American Brilliant Period” of American Glass Cutting.

From research through books and on the net, it seems a common practice for whoever is specializing in a specific type of glass to state that it is the best that was ever produced regardless of its quality or nationality.

Of course there are different grades and quality of glass produced in each country. The quality can vary drastically from being very poor to very high by the same factory. On many occasions, glass was produced for the very wealthy and on the extreme was also produced for the masses who could not afford the best money could buy. In addition to this fact, many factories were forced to produce inferior grades of glass for their survival during depressions, recessions, and wars. Regardless of country of origin, quality cut crystal and cut glass will always be treasured and avidly sought by collectors.