Duncan & Miller Blue Opalescent Glass Hobnail Bowl
This blue opalescent hobnail bowl, made in the early 20th Century comes from Duncan & Miller, a glassmaker known for their superb artistry and craftsmanship.
Dimensions: 10" diameter, 3" base, 2-1/2" - 3-1/4" height
Condition: Great antique used shape
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Duncan & Miller was an American glassmaker who for over 100 years produced glassware known for its excellent craftsmanship and artistry. This is a glass bowl in blue opalescent hobnail, a color combination and pattern not all that uncommon. It could be easy for many to credit this to Fenton who produced a great deal of hobnail in the last century, but a few details stand out that would cross Fenton off the list.
The degree to which this bowl is opalescent is a significant one. Opalescent glass is made opalescent by firing it a second time after the glass has cooled, the reheated areas being where its temperature is brought up to a certain heat. In most of the pieces you see the opalescence is at the edges of the item or the tips of the hobnail, the areas that were placed closest to the heat. You can see in this piece that as greater percentage of the bowl was allowed to opalesce, focusing not on the hobnail as much as the whole bowl.
The other characteristic that sets this bowl apart is the color. Color is almost always the key tell in identifying a glass maker when the piece is not marked. In this case, the light blue color, closer in color to clear than blue even, is a shade of blue not produced by many other glassmakers. I struggle actually to come up with one that produced a blue color this light. The opalescence really accentuates the blue color, and I suspect a non-opalescent version would appear clear under poor light.
This Duncan & Miller Blue Opalescent Glass Hobnail Bowl is a fantastic piece of antique glass that measures 10" in diameter with a 3" base. Its height varies, due to the ruffles, from 2-1/2" to 3-1/4". It is in great antique shape with no damage to note.