Important Recent Acquisitions, 2006
European Glass
Four Shot Glasses in their Original Straw Package
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Almost as important as making the glass is transporting it safely to the customer. In times when wheels were not pneumatic, the roads rough, and neither polystyrene nor foam materials were available, this was not a trivial task. Packaging required experience and care, and then it was typically ripped off and discarded as soon as the wares reached their destination. Very rarely has pre-modern glass packaging survived, but when it has, it offers an astonishing insight into this skill. These shot glasses were made in northern Germany in the late 18th or early 19th century. Overall L. 45.5 cm and D. (max) 5.6 cm.
Covered Goblet with Putti Hunting a Wild Boar
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“Historical revival” does not necessarily content itself with the slavish copy of bygone styles. Instead, surprisingly new results can be achieved by the combination of styles from entirely different sources. This goblet is a meticulous copy of the most accomplished type of Nuremberg vessels of the 17th century. However, the decoration of the bowl and cover refer to ancient Roman cameo glass. The latter posed an enormous challenge for Biedermeier glass factories in Bohemia and Silesia: the engraving required the complete mastery of carving into the outer layer of colored glass, turning it lighter as more glass was removed. Also, the glassmakers had to solve the problem of tensions in the glass caused by incompatible expansion coefficients of different glass colors.
The Josephinenhütte seems to have started its attempts in the mid-1840s, and employed in Ernst Simon (1817–1894) an exceptionally gifted glass engraver. He transformed the ornamental subject into a vivacious scene, and emphasized the contrast between the playful putti—sweet chubby children that have ancient ancestors and became popular in 16th-century arts—and their stern determination to hunt down a wild boar. The glass was made sometime between 1850–1870. Overall H. 53 cm and D. (max) 14.9 cm.
American Glass
Pressed Triple-Dolphin Lamp
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The Museum has been fortunate to acquire several very fine examples of American lighting this year. One is a lamp with a blown shade and pressed, triple-dolphin base. Dolphins were a very popular decorative motif in the neo-classical period and are found as furniture supports, and in a variety of glass and metal lighting fixtures. The pressed triple dolphin also was sometimes used as a support for compotes.
This example, the only one found so far in blue, is fitted with a handsome brass collar with an embossed grape design in relief. The original colorless shade is decorated with a matching cut-grape design. It was made by the Boston & Sandwich Glass Company, in Sandwich, Massachusetts, the only glasshouse known to have produced these bases.
Although these are usually referred to as lamps, they are candle fittings with shades. Candlesticks with shades are not common in American glass, because, in the north, windows usually were not open, and therefore the flame didn’t need protection from air currents. The shades were more ornamental than useful. H. 48.5 cm and D. (max) 18.3 cm.
Aesthetic-Style Stained Glass Lantern
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Another stunning example of 19th-century lighting is this stained glass lantern in the Aesthetic style with a brass frame and inset panels of marbled and stained glass. It was probably made in the 1870s when the Aesthetic movement was strong in the northeast region of the United States. The geometric arrangement of the colored glass in the leaded panels, the silver-stained flora and fauna on the panels, and the pierced detailing of the frame, all demonstrate the Aesthetic ideal of “art for art’s sake.”
Hall lanterns were a standard venue for fashionable lighting since they were often the first thing a visitor might see on entering the house, and, if hung in a stairwell, they would be seen from the side as well as from below. This is how our example seems designed to be seen. It was probably made in the workshop of a craftsman trained in England such as Daniel Cottier or Charles Booth. Lampshade H. 42 cm, W. 32.7 cm and D. 32.3 cm.
Modern Glass
King Athamas Pitcher
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Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) was a celebrated French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, and filmmaker. A member of the prestigious Académie Française, he was an international celebrity best known for his surrealist films. Cristallerie Daum, one of the leading glass manufacturers in France, invited Cocteau in 1957 to design a limited edition series of objects in pâte de verre, a glass-casting technique.
The pitcher acquired by the Museum is one of a group of three created by Cocteau that depict the ancient Greek King Athamas, his wife Ino, and their son Melicertes. As related in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, at the end of their lives, King Athamas and Ino were driven insane, Athamas murdered their son Learchus, and Ino and Melicertes fled to the sea, where they jumped into the water and were transformed into sea deities. Subjects drawn from the Metamorphoses and other well-known classical sources have been longstanding themes for artists and designers since the Renaissance. Cocteau’s characteristically simple, almost childlike, design for the pitcher shows King Athamas with a calm, sweet, and slightly smiling expression, somewhat like that of an ancient Greek kouros (youth). H. 24.9 cm, W. 26.1 cm and D. 15.4 cm.
Czech Glass from the 1960s
A bottle-shaped, enameled vase by Bohumil Eliáš (1937–2005), dated 1963 (left), and a large enameled vase by Jan Novotný (1929–2005), dated 1967 (gift of the Steinberg Foundation, right), are significant examples of Czech abstract painting in glass. Eliáš and Novotný, who both passed away last year, were part of the innovative, postwar generation of Czech artists who experimented with abstraction in glass and forged new relationships between design and contemporary art. While Eliáš’ design relates to contemporary Taschist painting (the European cousin of Abstract-Expressionism), Novotný’s composition reflects the darker, more symbolic images found in Czech Informel painting.
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While important in themselves, the two abstract vases also match drawings found in the Museum’s unique collection of original Czech design drawings acquired in 2001 from the Steinberg Foundation in Liechtenstein. The two new pieces will join other remarkable examples of postwar Czech glass from the Cold War era at the Museum, a period that was highlighted in the 2005 special exhibition, “Design in an Age of Adversity: Czech Glass, 1945–1980.” The work by Eliáš measures H. 38.5 cm and D. 14.5 cm. Novotný’s vase is H. 51.5 cm and D. 17 cm.