What is the difference between crystal and glass and its varieties? How to distinguish crystal from glass - some practical tips During the times of Ancient Rome, it was believed that crystal was water that had changed its properties.

Crystal tableware has been in demand at all times since the secret of crystal production was discovered. The material itself was first manufactured in 1676 in England. Crystal is a combination of glass and lead oxide. Because of this composition, crystal is called lead glass. It is not easy to identify crystal by appearance and distinguish it from glass, which is what unscrupulous sellers take advantage of, offering customers glass products at the price of crystal. So how to distinguish crystal from glass yourself?

Information about crystal

Natural crystal is rock crystal, which is a clear quartz found in river pebbles. This mineral is used in the jewelry industry for the manufacture of decorative inserts in jewelry. Artificial crystal is a raw material for the production of tableware and decorative items.

Crystal glassware

Crystal is characterized by such features as resistance to acids and a high refractive index. Despite its thinness, crystal is a very durable material. Thus, the density of crystal is on average 3.6 per 10 kilograms per cubic meter.

Crystal production cannot be called a quick and easy process, since it consists of the following stages:

  1. Melting the charge - a mixture of sand, lead oxide and potash. The melting point is 1500 degrees Celsius.
  2. Afterwards, a product of the required shape is blown from the crystal. Then it is fired in a special furnace under the influence of a descending temperature regime.
  3. An expert assessment of the finished crystal is carried out, during which the presence of defects (curvature, bubbles, cracks, etc.) is checked.
  4. Crystal lends itself to decorative design.

Depending on the composition of lead glass, the following types are distinguished:

  • classic crystal containing 24-30% lead oxide;
  • low lead: this crystal contains less than 24% lead oxide;
  • barium: contains a minimum of 18% barium oxide;
  • Bohemian: for the production of this type of crystal, not lead and barium are used, but glass consisting of calcium and potassium.

Glass vase

Crystal or glass?

As already noted, crystal usually resembles glass in appearance. How to distinguish rock crystal from glass:

  1. Glass, unlike crystal, has good thermal conductivity. If you put your hand on a glass object, it will quickly heat up. This is not typical for crystal.
  2. Crystal is a durable material, so it is resistant to damage, such as scratches. As for glass, it can be severely scratched in a matter of seconds.
  3. If you examine the glass under a magnifying glass, you can see a large number of small bubbles in its thickness. Crystal has a uniform structure.
  4. If you take an object made of glass and look through it at some object, the latter will appear magnified. As for crystal, it does not distort the parameters of objects in any way.
  5. If you take a cut crystal product and examine it in sunlight, you can see the play of colors. Glass does not have this property.
  6. Crystal, if you easily run a damp finger over it, will emit an increasing melodic ringing, which is not typical for glass.

Crystal dishes are expensive, especially if we are talking about elite material. Premium crystal is produced in factories in countries such as the Czech Republic, Russia and Germany. To avoid mistakes when purchasing crystal products, it is recommended to give preference to large stores that sell branded crystal tableware.

Rock crystal is a very beautiful transparent mineral. Jewelry, chandeliers, dishes, and decorative interior items are made from it. In addition to its decorative effect, it is believed to have healing and protective properties. In any case, its properties are unique enough to distinguish it from glass without analysis.

How to distinguish crystal from glass by eye

The first thing that should catch your eye when looking at fake crystal is the absence of any inclusions, air bubbles, etc. This is unusual, although it rarely occurs. It is clear that an ideal stone will not be spent on making an ordinary product. So a fake can be detected already at the inspection stage. If the crystal product is large enough, then it is worth looking through it into the light. When passing through a natural mineral, white light is decomposed into colored rays. The light from glass remains white, which is visible to the naked eye.

The second thing you need to pay attention to is the temperature of the stone. The natural mineral is cool to the touch and heats up very slowly, unlike the glass fake.

Crystal is a very hard mineral; in this parameter it is not much inferior to diamonds. So you can simply draw the sharp edge of the product along the glass. Glass will not be able to scratch glass, but crystal will definitely leave streaks.

Crystal glassware is checked for sound. When the glasses hit each other, a long melodic ringing sound should be heard. At the same time, you should not hit it too hard, since the crystal is very fragile and can break. Crystal makes a sound even if you run a finger wet from water over it, so with such a test it will not be possible to pass off glass as crystal. In general, dishes made from natural minerals are traditionally left uncut, and less often a simple design is applied. Even without decoration, crystal looks very rich and luxurious due to the colored reflections of refracted light. So the laconicism of the glasses is an additional plus in favor of the naturalness of the material.

How to distinguish glass from crystal in a chandelier

Crystal can become a real decoration of the room, as it emits an indescribable glow. If the buyer does not have enough experience to determine this shine by eye, then one trick can be used. If you look through a quartz plate at any object, its outline will split into two. This effect is due to the peculiarities of light refraction in natural material. Glass does not have this effect. So in this way you can check the chandelier right at the counter.

Technologies are moving forward, and only special gemological equipment can provide a 100% guarantee of the naturalness of the material.

Glass is, as a rule, an artificial material, because in nature it is formed extremely rarely, after such infrequent natural disasters as a volcanic eruption (volcanic glass) and a meteorite fall. In all other cases, glass is of artificial origin.

Pure rock crystal is a type of colorless natural quartz, shaped like a hexagonal pyramid (icicle). Translated from Greek "krystallos" means ice. Crystal originates in rock cavities (“crystal cellars”) and in the voids of lava deposits. But it also occurs in quartz veins (“crystal coffins”), limestone rocks and slate.
The largest places for rock crystal mining are China, Brazil, Switzerland, the islands of Madagascar and Ceylon.

In Russia, the main sources of rock crystal production are Yakutia and the Urals. There are rare varieties with inclusions of pyrite, asbestos and tourmaline. Rock crystal found in Ukraine has a smoky color. In the Carpathians, as well as in Crimea and Yakutia, there are transparent, very clean crystals with two heads and a strong shine, which are called Marmarosh diamonds.

There is also so-called artificial crystal - glass with the addition of lead in certain proportions. In each country, the permissible amount of lead for glass to be called crystal is different. In Europe, for example, no more than ten percent; in the USA, one is enough. There are also definitions such as lead and high-lead crystal, which differ in the percentage of lead content.

How to distinguish glass from crystal not in laboratory conditions and without gemological equipment.

The most important difference lies in such a physical property as thermal conductivity. If you place your palm on the glass, it will quickly heat up and become warm. The crystal will remain cool no matter how long it is held in warm hands. In ancient Rome, patricians even used crystal balls to cool their hands in the heat.


If you run wet fingers over the crystal surface, a clear sound will appear, reminiscent of ringing, but glass will not produce such a “sound.”

Crystal, even processed, is harder than glass. Therefore, various damages and scratches cannot be detected on it, even if you scratch it with a steel tool. But it can easily leave a mark on the glass, even with a slight impact on the surface. It will take some effort to break the crystal.

But the presence of gaseous bubbles or foreign inclusions indicates that this is ordinary glass. Rock crystal, on the other hand, can only include cracks and cloudiness.


During glass production, so-called lines are formed in it - lines along which a viscous liquid substance flows. When light passes through the glass these lines can be seen. You will not see these lines in crystal.

Glass has a uniform thickness across its entire surface and therefore tends to slightly magnify objects when you look through it. Looking through the crystal, no changes in the size and shape of things are noticed.

Rock crystal has the property of strong bifurcation. For example, if you take a crystal ball and place it on the edge of a sheet, the edge will split in two. This effect definitely cannot be achieved by conducting this experiment with a glass ball.

Rock crystal has a high refractive index, due to which it differs from glass in its special shine in the light and play of colors.

There is one more important difference that glass does not have - a “crystal” sound. If you knock two items made of crystal against each other (these can be chandelier pendants or glasses), you will hear a transparent, ringing, long, increasing resonant hum, which is not characteristic of glass.

If you still have doubts, and it is necessary to establish the authenticity of the crystal, then it is better to resort to the help of an expert examination.

The word "crystal" itself has Greek roots. The Greeks used the word "crystal" to call quartz without foreign impurities, for its ideal transparency, considering it to be frozen ice. These crystals were used to make lenses that were used to light fire. There is even a known case when a samovar was made for Peter I from a huge piece of rock crystal - this is how transparent quartz without foreign inclusions began to be called in Russia. And the first manufactory producing crystal products appeared in our country in the 13th century in the city of Gus Khrustalny.

Types of crystal

The following types of crystal are distinguished:

  • Rock crystal is natural quartz;
  • Lead crystal is glass containing lead oxide;
  • Barium crystal is crystal that uses barium instead of lead;
  • Bohemian crystal is crystal that uses potassium-lime glass instead of lead and barium.

History of the appearance and properties of crystal

The idea of ​​​​creating crystal from glass belongs to the British: they were the first to add lead oxides to it to improve the quality of glass, after which it acquired an unusual “voice”, transparency and sparkling edges. The “vocal” abilities of crystal, its transparency, strength, weight, shine and other properties depend on the percentage of lead oxide.

Gusev crystal is brewed with a lead oxide content strictly equal to 24%, which corresponds to amazing optical properties and high density. Thanks to this, we can observe the multicolor play of light in the edges, the shine of surfaces and hear a wonderful melodic ringing.

As the technology for producing crystal from silicon sand improved, it began to include the addition of, in addition to lead oxide, boric acid, arsenic and antimony compounds.

To create colored crystal, various additives are used: cobalt gives pure blue tones, for red - cadmium or gold compounds are added, for pink - silicon. Copper oxide makes crystal green, and manganese oxides give it an exquisite purple color.
In tsarist times, at the Gusevsky factory, crystal dishes and crystal vases were also painted using colloidal gold and uranium oxides.
These were quite expensive, but also the most beautiful pieces of art.

Typically, a crystal product is decorated with engraving - a shallow matte pattern, cutting - a wide polished edge, carving - deep grooves, at the intersection of which a mesh appears (the so-called "diamond edge",) and grinding.
After grinding, the edges acquire a special shine. Faceted crystal, refracting light, creates bright rainbow reflections.

Crystal production

To get crystal, you need to melt the charge from which the crystal is made. The charge is a mixture of sand, potash and lead oxide; its presence is the main difference between crystal and ordinary glass.

The raw materials are melted in furnaces at enormous temperatures of over 1500 degrees Celsius. The molten mass cools very quickly. To speed up the process, several people work on one product at once.

Master blowers, typesetters and pressers work at the furnace. Blowers are armed with special tubes with a rubber bulb. A drop of hot crystal is taken at one end of the glass blowing tube and the product is blown into a mold using a rubber bulb. The master compositor has a typesetting pipe. With its help, he collects the required amount of glass melt from the furnace and brings it to the press master, who controls the mold.

After the product is blown and given the required shape, it enters the furnace for annealing. Annealing is designed to cool the crystal more evenly. In the annealing oven, the temperature is reduced from 700 degrees to 40–50 degrees within 1.5 hours.

Next, in the flame of a gas burner, the upper part of the product, where there was a glass blowing tube, is cut off.
After this, the product undergoes the first quality control: are there any large bubbles, stones, or curvature of the leg; measure the thickness of the glass layer.

Smooth products are decorated with a diamond cut. To begin with, markings are applied to the product, after marking, the product is placed on a conveyor and goes from master to master. The process of applying a diamond edge starts with the largest abrasive wheel and ends with the smallest ones. To prevent glass dust from entering the respiratory tract, water is supplied to the abrasive wheels.

Crystal tableware has been valuable for several centuries and the cost of crystal has not fallen; on the contrary, now manual labor has become even more expensive. Do you know how crystal is made and how to distinguish crystal from glass? Do you know that there is colored crystal and double-layer crystal - the crown of glass art?

I can’t imagine a woman indifferent to beautiful dishes, and crystal dishes are very beautiful and also expensive, it always adds “beauty”. Crystal glasses, shot glasses, vases...Crystal dishes have a special energy, warmth, and are pleasant to touch.

Luxurious crystal glasses are always an excellent gift; the online tableware store Posud:meister.ua offers high-quality crystal and glassware.

How to make crystal

The main component of glass is quartz sand; heating it with other chemicals can produce a viscous liquid that can be shaped or blown into a specific shape. By adding lead dioxide, lead crystal can be obtained; it is much more pliable and complex patterns can be carved onto its surface.

How to distinguish glass from crystal

Classic crystal contains -24% lead oxide, in some products this substance can be up to 30%.

According to European standards, a glass product that contains lead oxide:

  • less than 4% is not crystal and belongs to the “glass” category
  • more than 10% belongs to the category “crystal glass”
  • 24% - “crystal”
  • more than 30% - “crystal with a high content of lead oxide”

The famous Bohemian crystal does not contain lead oxide; instead, potassium-calcium glass is added, and barium crystal is also available.

What are all these additives for? Lead oxide adds nobility to the finished product, it gets a “voice”, a gentle sound from contact, its color is absolutely transparent, crystal products seem warm and pleasant to the touch, crystal products especially shimmer and sparkle in the sun. Only their crystal products can have all these qualities.

Colored crystal and double layer crystal

Less known is colored crystal; products made from colored crystal have all the qualities of crystal. To give crystal color, various metal oxides are added at the manufacturing stage, giving beautiful colors - pure blue, pink, green, purple.

Overlaid crystal has the greatest value; it can be called a work of glass art. This crystal has two layers, one of them is colored and the other is transparent. When the product is ready, the artist removes the top colored layer of crystal during cutting and transparent edges appear. Highly artistic cutting can only be performed by a professional of the highest level; he must be a virtuoso in his field. Therefore, products made from two-layer crystal are the most expensive of their kind.



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