Cherry Blossom Depression Glass - Real or Repo Knowing if your Cherry Blossom Depression Glass is real or repo can be frustrating! Here's a few tips breaking down the different ways to help figure it out.
These are a big seller since they are a high ticket item. She felt bad she had been taken but was kind enough to let me photograph the piece to use in this article! So let’s study how we can tell if the butter dish is real or a repro!
The first thing I try to tell people learn your pattern, know how it feels, how it looks study your piece. There is a feel to Depression glass that is different from all other glass. That’s something that cannot really be explained but you will learn over time. Just the way Depression Glass has a certain feel, reproduced glass has its own. Many of the cheaply made repos feel oily. When you touch the glass just has a slick feeling to it. I always say I want to wash my hands after touching it! But be careful though with this rule, as French Opalescent Glass can feel oily too and it’s not a reproduction! Cherry Blossom though should not feel oily!
Many times on repros the coloring is off. It can either be too light of a pink, too orange of a pink or too deep of a green. Some colors were never made in certain patterns so that is the biggest give a way! You will also find there are exceptions to every rule so be careful. Sick glass, glass that did not process correctly or glass that has been “reheated” can have an orange shade to it. The color of glass is derived from how hot the furnaces would get. In those days they did not have a perfect measurement for temperature and because of the nature of this glass didn’t really care either. The shades may not match because of this reason alone.
I’ve also purchased a collection of Depression Glass and asked the women what had happened to her glass? All her glass, all different patterns, had an orange tint to it. Many pieces and patterns were never reproduced so I knew it wasn’t that. She couldn’t believe I knew something happened, but she had suffered a very intense fire. The glass had been “reheated” and had developed an orange tint to it. I’m not a chemist and can’t explain how that happens (probably something to do with molecules). Just to show you there are exceptions to every rule, so you have to look further when identifying a reproduction. I can’t stress this enough.
Let’s break down how I identified this butter dish as a repro. First the pink color was just a tad lighter than usual, almost a washed out pink. The feel of the glass was heavy and especially the bottom felt rougher than Depression glass usually feels. When I say rougher I don’t mean rough edges I mean the entire feel of the glass. Again these two identification points are something that comes with time, don’t expect to run out tomorrow and say this feels like a repo as you may pass up
