Topic: Pair of marked grisly green vases

[keith]

The painting is not up to much but I like them,odd mark on the base,i.d please,Keith

[Paul S.]

Does it react to UV - and can you post a close up pic. of the mark  -  you never know, it might help with i.d.   On the other hand it may well not.   You may never get any closer than 'eastern european - 1880 - 1930'   -    from my brief experience of these things there seem to be a vast amount of them out there, and attribution is nigh on impossible, unless the painting is exceptional, or you can recogize the mark.  You cud well make a collection of these and nothing else, they are so frequent at times.   Paul S.   

[Paul S.]

sorry, had I looked first I wud have seen you have shown the mark quite clearly.  Maybe someone will recognize it.  Paul S.

[Galle]

It is the number 9.

This being one of a pair, the same number or one in sequence should be on the other one?

[Ivo]

these are part of a three piece set which was most probably painted in cottage industry on factory blanks. All three pieces would get the same number to match the set. The date would be last quarter of the 19th century, the region of origin Bohemia (then part of Austria).

[Lustrousstone]

IMHO it's unlikely to be uranium glass, I have yet to find one of these brown-painted ones that does. Is it a true pair, i.e., are the pictures mirror images? If not, it probably wasn't a three piece set. Sibler and Fleming shows three-piece sets but even more single vases.

[Ivo]

I still think these are part of a three piece garniture with the tall centrepiece missing - as is so often the case. These are cold enamel decorated on stained milk glass, and have nothing to do with uranium. I have never heard of the concept that two vases should be mirrored to make a set - it is just as likely to have sets which symbolically represent e.g. faith, hope and love, or innocence, truth and constance, or (wait for it) king, queen and knave. Each decorator used his or her own mark on the bottom for the factory administration. 

[Lustrousstone]

I spent a few minutes looking at Silber and Fleming this morning. This Victorian catalogue shows three piece sets in which the all the outer vases are mirror images; if not exact mirror images then the vegetation is but the bird/butterfly is not (it faces the other way but is not quite in the same position). Here is the UK a true pair is generally defined as mirror images like shoes. A set of two is something different. These might be part of a three-piece set but they are not good quality. Three piece sets were relatively expensive and there is no reason why a less well-off customer couldn't buy two vases the same to stand on the ends of the mantlepiece because they couldn't afford a full ganiture

[keith]

Thanks to all,they are not uranium,the same number is on the other vase and the flowers are mirror images,ta Keith