fiddling with the controls on my new desktop...
But David just did a pretty good image of 2 that I got from Miss J recently...these are 8mm beads.
Am not sure, but I don't think Floor was able to find information in Czech Republic on saphiret...possibly the formula is lost. It is thought that gold (metal oxide?) was used in the process...
Anyone truly interested in saphiret should own at least one example, in my opinion, to at least preserve awareness of this awesome glass.
Saphiret glass is noticeably quite heavy.
I was able to find some info in the Czech republic, but not a lot. Most information I got was from the museum curator. Apparantly, saphiret is a variation of the ruby colored gold glass. This is a glass with added gold which gives it a distinct red color. With the addition of more gold, it became saphiret glass.
It has not been made in the Czech Republic since WWII. I do not know if the formula still exists. However, what the museum curator told me was the reason for the fact that they stopped making the glass was not because the formula was lost. After WWII, the glassmaking became part of a nationalized state company. Consistency of their products for export was very important. Making saphiret glass was a tricky process, and consistency was not really possible. One batch would come out different than the next batch. Not sure why, just repeating what I was told.
I was very lucky to find small saphiret jewelry components when I was in Jablonec. I asked around for the glass, showing an example, but was always told they did not have it. One of the antique shops I go to has hundreds of drawers with mixed old beads, cabs and jewelry parts. I had bought a bag of a certain mix and found out later that it had a few saphiret pieces in there. This place is so big and messy, that I never found the right drawer again until last year. I cleared out the whole drawer. The contents was basically 10 pounds of pretty worthless junk with I think in total 1 ounce or less of saphiret. I went through the whole 10 pound several times to find all the tiny pieces. I once tried to melt a bead from a tiny broken piece, but ended up with a clear piece of glass right after it hit the flame......
Anyway.....it is a very cool glass, and you do have to see it in person to get a good sense of how special it is.
In the picture is the mix where the saphiret came from, and some of the pieces I found.
Thanks for the refresher, and the newest chapter on the 10lb mix. I have but a few examples. And from back in the days that I worked for General Bead SF, they had a few marquis-shaped small point-backed "stones". They were part of a large job-lot of vintage stones, where we'd glue a sample on the end of the bin-box...when the items were sold out, the box would be discarded...and even though I didn't know what this glass was called at the time, I fished the box out of the trash and pulled off the 2 little saphiret stones......which are somewhere in my bead pile.
