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HyaciAntique Hyacinth Vases nth Vases |
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Glass under UV Light
How to force hyacinths and which varieties to use
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Antique Glass Under UV Light
Bagley Carnival Celery Vase, right, under UV light |
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The leech pot (left and right) glows very strongly under UV light (above). Unfortunately it is extremely cloudy. |
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| This is really the only hyacinth vase I have that I expected to glow under UV light as it's that distinctive sickly green colour of uranium glass but as you can see from the examples below a number of clear vases flouresce and even some of the amber ones due to different chemicals in the glass. |  |
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| This hyacinth vase did not fluoresce with a weaker UV light but it does under the more powerful one. |
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| This hyacinth vase is clear in normal light and I did not realise it would flouresce under UV light. I decided to test all my vases and I include here any that reacted whether due to uranium, cadmium or manganese. |
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| This leech pot is completely clear in normal light but has a definite glow under UV light. Manganese was used to neutralise impurities in glass, therefore making them clear, probably the case here. |  |
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| The clear hyacinth vase below right glows slightly orange under UV light whereas the above right glows green although they both appear perfectly clear in normal light. |  |
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| This hyacinth vase is clear in normal light and its green glow under UV is weak with manganese decolouriser. |  |
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| This vase has two layers of glass. The outer layer of striped pink glass does not fluoresce but the inner white glass and clear feet both fluoresce. |  |
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| This rose bowl is the same sickly green colour as the first hyacinth vase and glows just as strongly. |  |
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| This Georgian jelly glows under UV but is clear in normal light (pic to be added). |  |
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| I did not expect the strength of this result. I had not read anything about amber hyacinth vases glowing under UV but these 2 do very strongly, especially the first one, although they glow orange and yellow rather than green which is due to cadmium sulfide which was added to give the glass a yellowish (amber) colour. Another amber hyacinth vase I have doesn't fluoresce at all. | 
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| I expected the green vases to glow but some of the clear vases gave a surprisingly pronounced amount of fluorescence. The cobalt vases show none whatsoever. The fluorescent UV tube says "36W" on it. I'm not sure how that compares with a regular light bulb but the 75W bulb I bought from Maplins was completely useless for anything, especially showing fluorescence of antique glass. I still don't know why they sell it. | ||||
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last updated 21 October 2010 |
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