6 Ways to Spot if Your Piece is Pressed or Cut Glass...

I’m often asked how to tell if a vintage or antique glass piece is pressed or cut glass, so I thought i’d share my tips with you.

1.       Cut glass and pressed glass are produced in different ways, so they have a different, look, feel and quality.

2.       Pressed glass is a much quicker and cheaper manufacturing process, so pieces often have quite a lot of small bubbles in them.

3.       Many pieces of pressed glass have ‘seams’  as they are made in sections and then put together, so look for the seam or joins, it’s often more obvious on the underside of a piece or an area without patterning.

4.       Both pressed and cut glass items can have really ornate designs on them, but, the feel of the design on a cut glass piece will be sharp around the edges, where as the texture of the design on a pressed glass piece will be quite blunt.

5.       Unless the piece is especially small and delicate, cut glass will usually feel very heavy – pressed glass will have weight to it, but, not feel as heavy.

6.       If coloured, cut glass will often feature a sharp contrast between the surface colour and the clear glass showing in the cut.
 

I hope this helps and if you fancy a look at some of our lovely antique or vintage glass then visit our vintage shop and do a quick search for glass - we've got lots and lots - from jewellery to kitchenware!
We also have a couple of articles about the history of glass and how to identify glass bottles

Enjoy

Sarah