Effetre 275M - Dark Silver Plum M

Dark Silver Plum - version M. Machine-made. Oh dear.

My beloved Dark Silver Plum - what have they done to ye?

Apparently - I have not done a review of dark silver plum in the past - so you may not be aware of this truly delicious glass - one of my favourites. Contrary to it's name, there is not much plum to this glass - if you are going to think "purple." The rods can vary from a dark steely colour to a shimmery dark cocoa - but what it does is goes metallic, a dark shiny silver, and in some places, develops a beautiful high gloss metallic, and in others a matte shimmery silver. It's gorgeous. Allow me to show you.

This goddess bead, ...


This dragon bead, (notice the contrast between the highly glossy face and the matte bead he is clinging too.)



And this horse sculpture, all made with Dark Silver Plum.

CiM's Gunmetal is very similar, and I'll happily use it too. What I principly like is the matte effect, which is sort of like a devitrification (like EDP) - but I'm not sure if that is exactly what is happening.

Effetre 275 Dark Silver Plum has been one of the hand-made glasses - which makes it more expensive. So this new batch is - M - for machine made. And apparently - something has been lost in translation, as I can NOT get it to make the lovely matte effect.

Here are the two rods, side by side. Version M is the skinny one.





















It stayed shiny. Now - it is a nice, high gloss metallically shine. And when they were hot - they definitely looked like they were going to be purpley - with reddish streaks.


This one was reduced. Looks pretty much the same.

So - I thought I'd compare. The two beads on the right are the original, hand-made (version H) Dark Silver Plum. The far left is the version M, and the ivory beads has version M dots. Here - the original version H didn't develop it's usual matte sheen either.

So I stepped down to the smaller torch.



These were done on the Mega, (instead of the Midrange) - notice the two on the left went matte? These are all version H.

So these were also done on the Mega, with version M. None of them developed a matte, metallic sheen.


So - I could not get the machine-made version to develop a matte sheen. Now, if that particular characteristic bothers you - you will be happy. It certainly develops into a nice shiny gunmetal colour - with perhaps a bit of colour showing. But given that I love that matte look - this one is not a substitute for the version H.