What Is Pressed Glass? PHASE I

Today we are going to study and find the answer for the question of what the pressed glass is .

Pressed glass actually is molded glass, since it was made by pressing molten glass into a mold either by hand or by machine. Examples of machine-pressed glass would include most Depression glass patterns along with other types of glassware, and many times mold lines are quite visibly present on these lower quality yet perfectly collectible pieces. This is the type of glassware that would typically qualify as pressed glass.

Heisey, among other companies that made fine quality “elegant” glassware, employed the process of manual pressing to produce elegant glassware entirely by hand. Evidence of the mold is rarely seen on these pieces and they’re not traditional examples of molded glass.

How Was Pressed Glass Finished?

Collectible pieces of both hand- and machine-pressed glass were often finished by a method called fire polishing by elegant glass companies. This technique required applying a direct flame to give fire-polished (a term often used in marketing glassware when it was new) pieces an even, glossy finish.

This finishing process is sometimes referred to as glazing as well. Pieces with a more uneven texture and less of a gleam to the finish were not fire-polished. Most of what falls into the pressed glass category is not finished in this way.

Pattern Glass vs. Pressed Glass

Sometimes the term pressed glass is used generically by antique dealers and novice collectors to describe pattern glass. While this type of glass is a form of pressed glass due to the way it was manufactured, the terms used by avid collectors to describe it are most often Early American Pattern Glass or simply pattern glass.

Early American Pattern Glass (often abbreviated EAPG in collecting circles) was made using molds of one or more parts depending on the size of the piece being produced, and molten glass was pressed into the molds. The molds could be quite intricate when used to make figural knobs and patterns featuring animals, fruit, and other elaborate motifs.

Like Depression glass (although EAPG dates largely to the late 1800s while Depression glass didn’t debut until the late 1920s), these pieces were a part of everyday glassware sets when they were new and can contain mold marks, although some of the busier patterns hide them quite well.