Vase

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Vase

Manufacturer New England Glass Company (American, 1818-1888)

Place of OriginEast Cambridge, MA

Date1887-1888

DimensionsH 37.5 cm (14 3/4 in.); D rim 13.0 cm (5 1/8 in.); D base 13.2 cm (5 3/16 in.)

MediumAgata glass; blown.

ClassificationGlass

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1972.22

Not on View

DescriptionBody blown and finished by tooling. Applied tooled foot. Body and upper- and undersurfaces of foot stained. Concave, polished pontil mark.

Label TextMost objects made in the 19th-century American glasshouses were drinking vessels and other utilitarian objects. By the 1870s, however, glass began to be viewed as an artistic medium that could find expression in strictly ornamental forms. The New England Glass Works developed numerous varieties of shaded glassware suitable for art vases, including Amberina and Agata. Agata glass was a combination of opal glass and gold-ruby glass that was coated with a metallic stain after the vessel cooled. A volatile liquid, such as benzene or alcohol, was then applied to the stained area. When this evaporated it left a delicately mottled surface pattern that resembled lace agate, as well as the variegated lustreware pottery made by Josiah Wedgwood in the early 1800s (see Wedgwood’s shell-shaped plate nearby).Published ReferencesMcKearin, George S. and Helen McKearin, drawings by James L. McCreery, American Glass, New York, Crown, 1941; rev. ed., 1948, pl. 216, no. 7, center.

cf. Revi, Albert Christian, Nineteenth-Century Glass: Its Genesis and Development, rev. ed., New York Toronto, Nelson, 1967, pp. 56-59;

cf. Grover, Ray and Lee Grover, Art Glass Nouveau, Rutland, Vt., C. E. Tuttle, 1967, pp. 51, 54, fig. 94.

Barret, Richard Carter, Identification of American Art Glass, Manchester, VT, Forward's Color Reproductions, 1964, pl. 7, middle row, no. 2.

Wilson, Kenneth M., American Glass, 1760-1930: The Toledo Museum of Art, New York: Hudson Hills Press in association with the Toledo Museum of Art, 1994, p. 615, no. 994, colorpl. 994, p. 578.

Page, Jutta-Annette, The Art of Glass: Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio, Toledo Museum of Art, 2006, p. 160, repr. (col.) p. 161.

Exhibition HistoryThe Toledo Museum of Art, Libbey Glass: Triumphs of the Factory, 1888-1920, exhibition, August 14-September 25, 1988 (no catalog).