Topic: Karcag Hungary

[rocco]

As we haven't had a Karcag Hungary piece on the board yet, I am posting this wonderful ashtray in electric yellow-orange.
As far as I have read this is called "veil glass" (ultra fine crackle glass).

It looks like it was filled with sunlight, really glows across the room

Michael

[antiquerose123]

Thank you Rocco !!

Nice to see.  My grandparent immigrated from Hungary years ago to Canada here.   I have seen textiles, pottery, pictures, clothing, jewelry...etc.....etc.....but I have seen nothing of Hungarian art glass. 

So Thanks for this post!   

[brain_11]

Indeed, it was made by using a special pattented technique in the glass factory in Karcag in the mid 60s onward. Three layers of glass was used, the middle had different characteristics. When the hot glass was immersed to cold water, the middle layer cackled but the outer layers held it together.
Being a Hungarian I have several Karcag pieces in my collection and also for sale. I will display some at the next National Glass Fair in Birmingham in November when we have a special exhibition on Hungarian glasses. I hope to see you there.

Attila

[flying free]

I'm a big fan
yet to find 'the' piece though.
I found Karcag when I was trying to investigate a vase I have that isn't crackled.  I'm no closer on mine but I think it's a Karcag shape.
Lovely find!!!
m

[rocco]

Thanks all for the comments!

I have the advantage of running into Karcag pieces quite regularly here in Vienna, no wonder with the border to Hungary so near.
There are always some Hungarian sellers at the fleamarkets, selling mostly ceramics (which I love, and have a few in my collection).

Usually, I do not buy Karcag glass, but I fell in love with the colour of this ashtray

m, unfortunately I don't know anything about the output of Karcag apart from these "veil glass" pieces...

Michael

[rocco]

Any help with this vase highly appreciated, I am rather unsure if it is old or new.
Stands 28 cm tall, colours fading from amber/orange to red (would this be called "Amberina"?)

Moulded base, nicely bevelled rim.

Thanks!
Michael

[rocco]

On my travels today, I came across a vase exact same shape (but colourless, satinated glass) with a "Karcag, made in Hungary" label.
So this mystery seems to be solved

Still quite a surprise - but it seems very little is known about the output of Karcag, apart from their "veil glass" pieces..

Michael

[Ivo]

I think they may have been contract supplyer for Ikea before Ikea started sourcing in China.

[rocco]

Thanks, Ivo!
I hadn't heard of that before.

Mark Hill writes in his blog that Karcag was shut down by the communist government in the 1960s (which would make the IKEA connection impossible I guess).
But there is virtually no info on the company found on the web, so that may well be a wrong information.

Michael

[Anne]

A Pinterest board about them here: https://www.pinterest.com/rabelrita/karcag-hungarian-glass/  and a bit more on the Collectors' Weekly blog: http://www.collectorsweekly.com/stories/125984-karcag-glass-hungary

And this is probably the most useful info I have found so far as it gave me a name to search for...

In the year 1940 there was a glass factory established in Berek, the leader of which is Dr. Zoltán Veres.
[Source: http://furdo.berekfurdo.hu/en/?module=news&fname=history]

which led me on to find this in an obscure pdf file linked from a hungarian website...

Zoltán Veress (1901–1965) set up the glass department in the Budapest School of Design in the first half of the 1930s. He experimented with various combinations of the ‘metal’ and with melting procedures, before he founded a glass manufacturer in 1936 (Veress and Partner). His company first produced ornamental works of a special glass type, and later heat-resistant glassware for laboratory purposes under the trademark ERGON, as well as glass for illumination devices. In addition to these two main groups, he revived historical glass types such as the aventurine glass, the Römer and the winged glass shape of Venice-Murano. In his glassworks at Karcag-Berekfürdő, founded in 1940, he carried on technological experiments in colouring glass and producing special metals such as copper and chromium aventurine, neodine, selene and copper ruby glasses. The ‘mass-produced fancy glass’ supply of the 1960s was predominated by the ‘veil-glass’ (not transparent glass) developed together with Zoltán Suha in 1961. The early designs were reduced to basic geometrical forms, spheres, hemispheres, cones and truncated cones. Later László Hornicsek joined Veress to design veil-glass objects. Apart from several technical innovations to be detailed elsewhere, Zoltán Suha (1932–) also contributed to designing. In 1962 the production of veil-glass began on the basis of his designs approved by the jury in 1961. From 1975 to 1981 he designed seemingly unique fancy glass shapes for centrifuge production, a technique used for expressly large series. The master blowers and glassworks foremen—such as József Varga (1909–1990) and Viktor Gritz in cut coloured crystal, and later Géza Takács (1924–),  a pupil of Mánczos in the Salgótarján, who designed crystal, fancy, machineblown and pressed glass objects alike—also actively contributed to glass design, relying on their technical-technological experiences and concentrating on the proposed function.

[Source: transparent thoughts—the meaning of glass - Artportal - http://artportal.hu/pdf/34_003VVbevezangoljav1.pdf]