The process of cutting into the surface of an annealed glass object either by holding it against a rotating copper wheel fed with an abrasive or by scratching it, usually with a diamond.

The technique of removing the surface of an object with a rotating wheel fed with an abrasive, or by some other means.

Any instrument used by glassworkers to develop and shape an object. Glassworkers’ tools include the blowpipe, pontil, gathering iron, jacks, shears, clapper, pallet, block, pincers, battledore, lipper, and crimper.

The collective term for the many techniques (such as copper-wheel engraving and cutting) used to alter or decorate glass when it is cold.

A popular term for colorless lead glass, which has a high refractive index and consequently is particularly brilliant. In the United Kingdom, glass described as crystal must contain a defined percentage of lead oxide. Today, the word is often used to describe any fine glass tableware.

A type of decoration in the stems of 18th-century and later drinking glasses, made by twisting a glass rod embedded with threads of white glass, threads of colored glass, columns of air (air twists), or a combination of all three.

(1) Several types of glass with newly developed surface textures, shaded colors, or casing, made in the United States from about 1870 and in Europe between about 1880 and 1900; (2) more generally, especially when written “art glass,” any ornamental glassware made since the mid-19th century.

(Italian, “glass with a small network”) A type of blown glass made with canes organized in a crisscross pattern to form a fine net, which may contain tiny air traps.

An air-filled void, which may be of almost any shape. Air traps in stems are frequently tearshaped or elongated and spirally twisted.

The technique of forming an object by inflating a gather or gob of molten glass on the end of a blowpipe. Traditionally and in modern furnace working, the gaffer blows through the tube, slightly inflating the gob, which is then manipulated into the required form by swinging it, rolling it on a marver, or shaping it with tools or in a mold. It is then inflated to the desired size. In flameworking, one end of the glass tube is heated and closed immediately, after which the worker blows into the other end and manipulates the hot glass.

A decorative bottle with a stopper, used for serving wines and spirits.

Glass that is colored by (1) impurities in the basic ingredients in the batch or (2) techniques of coloring glass by one of three main processes: (a) using a dissolved metallic oxide to impart a color throughout, (b) forming a dispersion of some substance in a colloidal state, and (c) suspending particles of pigments to form opaque colors.

A small, heavy object designed to hold down loose papers. The first glass paperweights were made in the early 1840s in Venice and France, and their manufacture spread rapidly to other parts of Europe and the United States. Glass paperweights ceased to be fashionable in the early 20th century, but the craft of making them revived in the 1950s.

A pocket of gas trapped in glass during manufacture. The term is used both for bubbles introduced intentionally (known as air traps or beads) and for unwanted bubbles created during the melting process. Very small bubbles are known as seeds.

(Noun) A mass of molten glass (sometimes called a gob) collected on the end of a blowpipe, pontil, or gathering iron; (verb) to collect molten glass on the end of a tool.