Milk glass first emerged in sixteenth-century Venice and was initially produced in all sorts of colours, including yellow, brown, black, pink and blue, and always with an opaque, milky appearance. Milk glass is still found in some of these colours, especially blue, but white remains the most popular hue. Glassblowers in the 19th century referred to milky white, opaque glass as “opal glass”. This white colour is achieved by adding an opacifying agent, such as tin dioxide or bone ash.
A comparable Beinglaskanne is kept in the collection of the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich (inv. G 1164).
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