Vintage 1960s Overshot Frosted Glass Pitcher with Lid. 

Size: 6 1/2 x 10 1/2 x 5 in. 

#8361 . 

Overshot glass had its origin in 16th Century Venice, and the ability to make this ware eventually spread to Bohemia, Spain, and elsewhere in Europe. Some time prior to 1800, however, the regular production of this glass seems to have stopped. The Englishman Apsley Pellatt, owner of the Falcon Glass Works in Surrey, is credited with reviving this decorative technique around 1845 to 1850. He acknowledged the origin of the technique by calling his product “Venetian Frosted Glass” or “Anglo-Venetian Glass.” As other companies copied his style, it would be called by other names, such as Frosted Glassware, Ice Glass, Craquelle Glass, and the original name, Overshot. The difference between crackle glass and traditional overshot glass is in the process, as crackle glass was produced by dipping a partially blown gob of hot glass in cold water. The sudden temperature change caused fissures or cracks in the glass surface, and then the gob was lightly reheated and blown to its full shape. The blowing process enlarged the spaces between fissures to create a labyrinth of channels in varying widths. When cooled in the annealing lehr, the surface of the finished object had a crackled or cracked-ice effect. Overshot glass was made by rolling a partially or fully inflated gob of hot glass on finely ground shards of glass that had been placed on a steel plate called a marver. The gob was then lightly reheated to remove the sharp edges of the ground glass, creating a dizzying array of almost snowflake-like patterns. Occasionally pieces were immersed in cold water before the application of the ground glass, which made them both crackle and overshot, although if the ground glass was added first the process would not work, as the many thousands of small shards would cause microfractures and eventually lead the glass to break. Overshot pieces could be further embellished with an applied glass design that required a third decorative technique at the furnace, such as applied glass designs or fine threads of glass that have been picked up and fused to the object. This latter decorative style, called Peloton, was first patented in 1880 by Wilhelm Kralik in Bohemia. A significant amount of overshot glassware was made in the United States and Europe from the 1860s through the first quarter of the 20th Century. Boston & Sandwich and Hobbs Brockunier were the largest companies that manufactured overshot in the US, but their products were particularly utilitarian, mainly vases, decanters, cruets, bowls, water pitchers with ice bladders, lights, and lamps, so collectors did not seek it out as much as art glass. Very little of this glass has survived from that period, although Czechoslovakian overshot glass has fared somewhat better. Scientists have attempted to study this and understand why so much survived, with various theories posited from the quality of the water used to the amount of silica to weather and atmospheric pressure changes during the making of them. Regardless, both overshot and crackle glass is still made, but as it is one of the most delicate, difficult, and least known processes of glassmaking, it takes a particularly skilled craftsperson, such as those at the still-functioning Blenko Glass Company in West Virginia, to make them correctly. Their rarity has made them highly sought collectors items since the beginning of the 21st Century.