The word for stretch glass is elegance. Stretch glass is the elegant child of colorful and highly modeled carnival glass, and made by the same glass manufacturers. Where the carnival glass is highly modeled, stretch glass is usually made on simpler lines with less ornamentation. And where carnival glass is very iridescent, stretch glass has a subtler iridescent sheen. All in all, stretch glass is just elegant.
The Tiffany Company created Favrile glass around the turn of the Twentieth Century. This art glass has a great iridescent finish, and was usually made into fairly plain shapes, like the jack-in-the-pulpit vase, so that the iridescence was plainly visible. Other art glass companies followed suit with their own versions of Favrile glass in relatively simple shapes, and soon iridescent glass was the in thing. Carnival glass Was the molded glass makers’ response to the Favrile glass, and was intended to give regular people access to iridescent glass.
The answer for the molded glass companies was a sprayed on finish of metallic oxides that would impart iridescence to their glass production, which was later named carnival glass. The metallic oxide spray was applied to the glass piece once it was molded and before it was set in the lehr for tempering. Stretch glass resulted if the molded glass was returned to the furnace and reheated. Because of the surface coating,the interior of the glass piece expands faster than the surface does, leaving a crazed iridescence. The stretch marks and crazing in the iridescent finish softens the iridescence into a velvety sheen that is most pleasing.
The glass makers realized at once that the stretch glass iridescence was closer to the iridescent art glass in looks, and started applying the oxides and reheating the glass of more plainly molded forms. Thus, the velvet sheen becomes the most important feature of stretch glass, and the form of the glass takes second place. Stretch glass was made into simple vases, compotes and candlesticks, which are generally sold as console sets to be displayed together. Fenton stretch glass and other brands of stretch glass can be recognized on sight once you have seen the velvety sheen in pictures or in person.
Elegant in form and with a subdued but definite iridescence, stretch glass is a nice development to carnival glass, which tries to sjhow great iridescence on a highly modeled surface. Stretch glass was originally made in the first half of the 20th Century when carnival glass was made. Glass makers returned to the production of carnival glass in the second half of the 20th Century, and probably made stretch glass again as well.