G is for Glass Animals - Oh Dear, More Deer!

I was toying, for several years (the folder these come from has been filling since 2020) with trying to establish 'Vitrines' as the collective noun for these, but the trouble is vitrines are already a thing, specifically small glass table-top/mantle-piece display cabinets, sometimes confused with the similar terrarium glass mini-greenhouses for houseplants, or even fancy lanterns for tea-lights!

 

So even if you were minded to go along with me, it wouldn't be ideal, and sometimes confusing, while if you were determined to not cooperate with the naming exercise, it would annoy the hell out of you every time I used it!

 

Equally, some people call them 'Murano', especially on eBay, where EVERYONE's an expert! And, while there are elements of Murano in their production, Murano is a particular form of Venetian Glass, specifically from the island of Murano, and pertains to larger pieces, using techniques not often found in these little novelty animals, which are more generic to glass foundries everywhere, and amateur glass-sculpting hobbyists.

 

AND, we're looking for a word or phrase which will also cover the plastic-tat versions, and 'coloured-transparent-animals-in-glass-or-plastic' is too much of a mouthful, so, they will be 'Glass Animals' in the Tags, even if they are plastic, and I hope that suits everyone!

 

In the order in which they were originally shot, we'll start with the plastic tat! These were a common prize at fairgrounds, where skill in hooping, hooking, magnet-fishing, shooting (air-guns or darts) or knocking a coconut off a pole, could win you your very-own, chained together set of coloured, transparent animals!

 

Chained together, coloured, transparent . . . yeah, well, boys would pick a pack of cap-bombs or something!  A loo-roll 'Furby' (called a Gonk, and predating Furbies by several decades!), or a bottle of bubble-liquid with wand, were other common choices, a Frisbee, or a balsa-wood fighter-plane! But, under multicoloured, flashing lighting, on their little gloss-painted wooden plinths, these boxes looked pretty attractive!

 

One the left, 1950/60's, on the right 1970's, even more-tattier, tat, in a reverse pose, but the charm's still there, and I bet you can still find these in some souks or markets about the planet! In the end, key-rings were added to some of the more substantial, or just 'less-frangible' mouldings.

 

But, in the 1940/50's, you got glass ones! And here, on the left is a box for a glass set, with a slight variation of the other set on the right - lightly oblong box against the first one's true-square, and a variation of code number, 33V as opposed to 33VA?

 

AG or GA does not spell Venice or Murano! German, Czech', American . . . Japanese?

"ArtNo" hints at Germany, does anyone know?

AG could be something-Glass.

 

The glass ones are much finer, and quite delicate, although some strength is imparted by dint of the stretching, and the annealing effects of continued heating and cooling, as the various steps of the manufacturing-process are gone through.

 

Glass got tissue-paper packing, while plastic gets plastic!

 

Comparison between the two, let's be fair to the toy-men of Hong Kong, it's not bad, and in a capitalist world, it's all about the money saved, at least they've tried to make the one resemble the other? No pink bows, or chains, on this (later?) set of plastics?

 

"Come out to play!"

 

Another boxing of the plastics, the little pink bows are illustrated, but the bondage chains are left off all artworks, here credited to an Illfelder Toy Co., of New York, but plainly the same Hong Kong product.

 

A lot I saw on eBay, with pink-glass horses (or donkeys?), the ceramic deer we saw, cropped-out in a previous post a day or two ago (I'm losing track at the moment!), and a chained set of the 'barley-sugar' deer, also in glass.

 

This one, who I picked-up the other day, in a charity shop next to the lucrative (for Rack Toy Month) Post Office in Cranleigh, is slightly more Murano in style with the orange glass-powder sprinkled, or, more commonly 'picked-up' by rolling the molten glass over the ground glass, on it's back, but is, otherwise, following the same pattern as the others, and it's one of the simpler techniques.

 

While these - above - are obviously all mass-produced sets of commercial production, the many glass animals you find, may also include both craft/hobbyist pieces, and end-of-term/end-of-year student test pieces - can you produce, using a set number of techniques, a number of similar sculpts, following a set of recently-taught rules?

V is for Vitriform Venusian Villains

Well, they don't look very friendly, they're as likely to be from Venus as anywhere else, given they are FICTIONAL, and they are definitely glasslike, as they are made out of glass! I shot these oddities on Adrian's Mercator Trading table back at one of the London Shows in the year just gone - torch-welded rod-glass alien figuriens

They look like the kind of thing you get in the sort of gift shop which isn't tied to a major tourist attraction, or a posh/independent Hotel's gift shop - "Something to take home for the relatives"? Clearly in a Murano style, but not well-executed enough to be such a renowned mark, and these were unmarked, in generic plain stock-boxes, but still - rather fun!

I think the two on the left are variations of the same purple/mauve chap/ess, while red and blue are to the same design, but obviously different colourways (red is quite opaque) and the green amphibiman one is altogether different, maybe from Mars! They could - of course - be qualification/end of term pieces from a glass student? The bases are also glass, opaque, white glass, like and Old Spice bottle!