Scent Bottles: Opaline Glass

 During the Second Empire, glass manufacturers in France produced scent bottles in opaline, an opaque or slightly translucent glass that can appear either white or brightly colored in shades of apple green, turquoise blue, rose pink, jet black, soft lavender and sunny yellow. Opaline glass is opacified to a translucent or opalescent state by the addition of tin oxide or ashes of calcified bone. It is not to be confused with common milk glass. Real opaline glass has a "fiery sunset glow" when held to the light, indicative of older glass pieces.

The heavy and costly glass has a high lead content which defined it as "demi-crystal" or semi-crystal. The primary influences on this style of glass were 16th century Venetian milk glass, the achievements of the Bohemian color chemists, and English white glass produced in 18th-century Bristol. The factory of Richardson at Stourbridge in England was famous for its opaline type glass in the 1840s and 1850s.

In competition with the Bohemian glass factories, the French experimented with a variety of ingredients to change the color of the crystal. Between 1810-1835, a variety of colors were perfected in opaline glass. There are a number of techniques used to tint opaline. But in general, the same colorants as are used for clear glass will be effective with opaline.

It is hard to ascertain any one manufacturer as most of the antique opaline glass is not branded or signed. The finest examples of French opaline glass date from 1840 to 1870, notable factories being Baccarat, Saint Gobain and Saint Louis. In fact the term opaline first came into use at Baccarat around 1823. St Louis used the term pâte-de-riz. The Choisy-le-Roi glassworks in France produced some of the finest opaline glass starting in 1838. 

Note that real opaline glass was produced only in France, but you may come across Italian glass known as "opaline veritable", which was produced in the early 1900s and well into the mid-century. The Italian opaline glass you find today was mainly used for smoking sets such as cigarette boxes and ashtrays.

The ‘Journal des Dames et des Modes’ in January 1824 remarked that: ‘On a donné aux dames, en cadeau de Jour de l’An, beaucoup de cristaux colorés en blanc laiteux dit opale; en rose dit hortensia, en bleu dit turquoise…’ [‘The ladies were given a lot of colored crystals as a New Year’s gift in milky white called opal, in pink called hydrangea, in blue called turquoise…’] (S. Faniel (ed.), ‘Le Dix-Neuvième Siècle Français’, Paris, 1957, p.126).

Scent Bottles:

As early as 1820, French Opaline glass appeared in the shape of urns, scent flacons and jewel caskets blown in wooden molds, some embellished with rococo ormolu mounts. One characteristic that all opaline glass has is that it is hand-blown and features either a rough or cut and fire polished pontil scar on the bottom. Opaline glass does not have any seams and does not have any engraving done via machine, all engraving or etching is painstakingly done by an experienced hand. 

The opaque glass bottles were decorated with gilding, enameling, etching or encasement in metal filigree work. Decorations included themes of animals, figures, flowers, fruit, baskets, scenic, foliate scrolls, latticework or geometric motifs. Many of these bottles were fitted with collars that featured chains so that the bottle could be suspended via the finger or from a chatelaine at the waist. Several luxurious examples have bronze ormolu, gold or silver mounts, rims, hinges or holders. These more expensive bottles may have adornments of precious and semi-precious gems, such as rubies, garnets, sapphires, emeralds, amethysts, coral, turquoise, onyx, and diamonds, while the lesser priced examples have simulants of these gemstones made of cut glass or matching opaline cabochons and are fitted with brass or pewter metalwork. 

Yellow Opalines:

The yellows come from a variety of sources. A vivid canary yellow debuted in 1810, which was the result of the addition of antimony. The sesquioxyde of uranium gives a fluorescent yellow, the oxide of lead lends a pale yellow, and the oxide of silver, applied as a pigment to the surface of the glass gives a permanent yellow stain. 

In Bohemia and Germany, the shade of uranium was known as Uran-ochre and Uran-glimmer.

Blue Opalines:

A sky blue shade was first perfected in Bohemia and then copied by Baccarat and St Louis into a shade dubbed bleu turquoise in 1825. Ultramarine blue was most frequently used between 1845 and 1850 resulting in cobalt shades. Deep blue, indigo, purple blues and normal blues are obtained from varying proportions of cobalt. The vivid shade of peacock blue is derived from copper.

Some bi-color (white and blue) opaline was made at Baccarat in 1850. 

Pink & Purple Opalines:

Purple opaline was made in small quantity about 1828 at the Paris factory of Bercy and also outside the capital at Choisy-le-Roi. Small quantities of cobalt can be used to achieve a purple shade, but it was mostly manganese that provided the extremely rare soft shade of lavender for violet. 

Rose opaline, for example, emerges with the addition of manganese. The addition of Purple of Cassius revealed a mauve tinged rose opalin hue. A small proportion of Purple of Cassius, a purple pigment formed by the reaction of gold salts with tin(II) chloride was used to create pink opaline. In large proportions it was used to impart glass with a red coloration (such as cranberry glass). A particularly rare shade, a translucent mauve, was known as pigeon de gorge, or "pigeon throat" was also referred to as rose hortensia and hydrangea, was not produced after 1840. The pink color is formed by the addition of particles of gold and pewter to the liquid lead crystal, which accounts for its rarity.  

Green Opalines:

Various greens were also produced, ranging from almond and sea green between 1825 and 1830 to less subtle shades of leaf green in later years. Two particularly lovely green colors were apple and a deep emerald. Differing amounts of chromium or copper give the various tones of green to the glass. The oxide of chromium provides a deep emerald green. Dull sea water tint gets its hue from ferrous oxide.

White Opalines:

1822, saw the introduction of an opalescent glass called boules de savon (soap bubbles) which displayed delicate rainbow hues. Opalescent glass tends to have recipes calling for either tin, lime or arsenic or from native minerals such as fluorite or cryolite imported in large quantities at the time from Greenland.

It was followed by a water and milk shade called blanc laiteux (milky water) in 1823. 

The satin finished alabastre (alabaster), a greyish white with a coarse surface debuted in 1844.