How to tell a hand-blown glass bauble from a machine-made one

Most of the Christmas baubles you will find on a shelf were formed in a mould and produced in large runs. A hand-blown glass bauble is a different object, and once you know what to look for you can tell them apart in a few seconds.

Look for the seam, or rather the absence of one

A moulded bauble is formed by pressing or blowing glass into a two-part mould, and that mould leaves a faint vertical line running from top to bottom on opposite sides. Run a fingernail lightly around the widest part of the bauble. If you feel a ridge, it came out of a mould. A free-blown bauble has no seam at all, because the glass was never pressed against anything but air and the glassmaker's tools.

Check whether they are all identical

Machine-made baubles in a box are identical because they were made to be. Hand-blown baubles are individually blown, so the swirls of colour sit differently in each one, the shape varies by a millimetre or two, and the depth of colour changes depending on how the glass moved on the day. If you hold two of ours side by side, they are clearly the same design and clearly not the same object.

Look at the loop

On a mass-produced bauble the hanging loop is usually a metal cap pushed into the neck, often with a spring clip. On a hand-blown bauble the loop can be glass, formed while the piece is still hot by drawing molten glass out of the body and shaping it with tongs. It is part of the bauble rather than a fitting attached to it.

Feel the weight

Thin machine-blown glass is very light and dents the moment it meets a hard floor. Hand-blown glass is usually a little heavier in the hand, with a wall thickness that varies slightly around the piece. That variation is not a flaw. It is the fingerprint of the person who blew it.

Ask where it was made, and who made it

This is the simplest test of all. A seller who can name the studio, the town and the people at the furnace is telling you something a seller who cannot name any of them is not. Irish hand-blown glass is a small world, and the studios that do it are easy to look up by name.

Ours are blown at Jerpoint Glass Studio in Stoneyford, Co. Kilkenny, where Keith and Kathleen Leadbetter started blowing glass in 1979. Each bauble is 8 cm across, individually blown from molten glass, tied with a white satin ribbon and packed in a gift box with a card telling the story of how it was made.

Why we are selling them

This year our baubles are part of a campaign called Home at Last. €10 from every bauble goes to the Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust, the volunteer-led charity that helps families bring their people home when someone dies suddenly or tragically abroad. In January the Trust brought Martina's son Kyle home to his family in Kilkenny, and the campaign is how the two of us are saying thank you.

You can read the full story, and see the three colours, on the Home at Last campaign page, or go straight to the bauble itself. They are €29.99, in Green, Berry or Clear, with postage of €10 per order however many you buy, anywhere in Ireland and Northern Ireland.