THIS COMPILATION OF CORRECTIONS FOR THE FOLLOWING BOGGESS BOOK IS UPDATED PERIODICALLY. THE WRITER WOULD APPRECIATE HEARING FROM READERS WHO CAN CONTRIBUTE ADDITIONAL IDENTIFICATIONS, OR WHO HAVE SPOTTED ERRORS ON THIS LIST. PLEASE SEND YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE WRITER AT jmhavens99 at hotmail dot com
A Note on the Russian Pattern: Variations of this pattern are identified on this correction sheet, if examples are illustrated. Russian Canterbury is equivalent to Russian, the catalog name (but relevant catalogs are often not available). The longer name is preferred by today's dealers and collectors in order to avoid confusion with the three other variations of the Russian pattern: Russian Cleveland, Russian Ambassador, and Russian-Persian. The Persian pattern is a different pattern; it is not the same as Russian-Persian. The Persian pattern appears on item 192b in this book.
Although long out-of-print, AMERICAN BRILLIANT CUT GLASS frequency appears for sale on eBay. It is appropriate, therefore, to re-consider the following review by Estelle Sinclaire Farrar which appeared in The Glass Club Bulletin, No. 121, p. 11 (Dec 1977) when the book was originally published (permission to reprint granted):
AMERICAN BRILLIANT CUT GLASS by Bill and Louise Boggess, viii + 183 pp., 646 illus., table of 45 U. S. and Canadian trade marks, index of designs, index. Crown publishers, Inc., New York 1977; $12.95.Updated 20 Apr 2005The authors' preface to this new book says that they have written on the subject for national antiques magazine, and lectured to women's clubs. This undocumented work seems to be intended for beginning collectors.
The book's chief strength is its good photographs of about 670 pieces of cut glass. The makers of some 400 are identified; they include several relatively unfamiliar firms. Makers names are given for almost 150 designs, including many that have already been published. In addition, the reader will find seven pages from the catalogs of the Bergen, Libbey, Pitkin & Brooks, and M. J. Averbeck companies, and one from a Hawkes advertising brochure.
The text is less helpful. Indeed, its errors are so numerous and serious that they can only be suggested within the compass of a review. A basic unfamiliarity with glassmaking terminology pervades the book. Glasshouse and cutting company appear as synonyms (p. 87), as do lehr and kiln (p. 9). Equally serious is the authors' confusion of copper-wheel engraving, intaglio cutting, and cutting, which leads to a number of mistakes. Nor does the Boggesses' grasp of glassmaking history and technology seem much firmer. "Making the Glass Blank" (Chapter 1, p. 7) says that "Americans added a new ingredient to the formula -- lead". They give a debatable list of ingredients, and add that "the amount of lead . . . ranged from 35 to 50 percent". This does not agree with the reviewer's experience, based on a Dorflinger-Sinclaire formula for Best Metal. At under 30% lead, its product does not seem noticeably lighter than Libbey and Fry blanks, though some of Webb's are certainly heavier. The statement that "Most glass experts agree that H. C. Fry made the finest lead blanks" (p. 7) will cause tooth-gnashing in Toledo and Corning. It is partially contradicted later in the book where they say (p. 131) that Fry "put out some of the poorest [blanks] in his late period". But the date of that period is not given.
Chapter 2, "Artistry on Glass", begins with a statement of American superiority in cut glass due, among other things, to the use of electric power -- an adventage that began late and cannot have long endured -- and better feeding-up brushes, which "gave a finer polish". These brushes in fact aimed to cut costs by replacing the labor of a boy. Women are said never to have been cutters. They were in New York State. H. P. Sinclaire is paired with O. F. Egginton as a master cutter, though Sinclaire never cut glass. On p. 12 the rougher who cuts the first deep incisions on a blank is inexplicably dismissed as "probably an apprentice". The book's thumbnail sketches of 42 cutting companies are seriously inaccurate. John Hoare, for example, is credited with moving the Brooklyn Flint Glass Works to Corning in 1855, though in fact Amory Houghton and his partners did so in 1868 (p. 60). Hoare & Gould is wrongly placed in Corning. Almy & Thomas, the O. F. Egginton Co., and the Hunt Glass Co. are said to have used Corning Glass Works blanks (pp. 45, 54, 60). They did not.
The Boggesses write that young Christian Dorflinger "learned to cut glass in his uncle's factory" (p. 53), the Cristalleries de Saint-Louis. According to Kathryn Hail Dorflinger Manchee "Dorflinger Glass", Antiques, April 1972, pp. 710-711) the uncle was merely "associated" with the factory.
The book is difficult to use. For example, the principal discussion of copper-wheel "cutting" per se appears in Chapter 3, "Identification by Motif", rather than after the section on cutting per se in Chapter 2. The authors confuse cutting with engraving, stating (p. 17) that Hawkes "completely restored the cut [engraved is meant] surface to its original clarity", but refer the reader to the photograph of an unpolished Hawkes engraving. Discussions of signatures, repairs, damaged glass and other self-help topics are long-winded yet over-simplified. The statement (p. 136) that much top quality cut glass never had a name or number makes one wonder how orders were placed or filled, or cutting jobs assigned.
Errors have become distressingly frequent in undocumented books and articles on American cut glass. This book should be carefully examined by prospective purchasers to decide whether its good photographs outweigh the inadequacy of its text.
Estelle Sinclaire Farrar