No-one likes general adverts, and ours hadn't been updated for ages, so we're having a clear-out and a change round to make the new ones useful to you. These new adverts bring in a small amount to help pay for the board and keep it free for you to use, so please do use them whenever you can, Let our links help you find great books on glass or a new piece for your collection. Thank you for supporting the Board.

Author Topic: Aesthetics after commercial expediency?  (Read 1555 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Sklounion

  • Guest
Aesthetics after commercial expediency?
« on: November 15, 2006, 09:30:49 PM »
Hi,
Having noted that there are observers here of differences, which lead to one pattern being discernable from another very similar, can I pose a question?
Did aesthetics come second to industrial expediency in this piece:
http://www.hogelandshoeve.nl/66pix/question%2016s.jpg
Surely were you to design a plate with three-way divider, you would use  any multiple of three, in this case nine ribs, rather than eight, for the pattern, thus allowing the ribs to follow the lines in the pattern?
So, was the three-way divider, a socially acceptable division, and thus more in accord with public taste, than the idea of a four partition concept, even where it spoils the design? Or was the idea of spending money on a new divider mould too costly???
Does this echo landscape planting, where it is more acceptable to plant specimen items, or arrange plants in groups of odd number, than use even numbers? (even allowing for the eccentricities of the Fibionacci series).

Ideas gratefully welcomed,

Regards,

Marcus
La Casson tells me, from near slumber, that 3 and 8 work, when taken in the context of the "Golden Section".Now I'm very confused :oops:  

Support the Glass Message Board by finding a book via book-seek.com


Offline David E

  • Author
  • Members
  • ***
  • Posts: 3908
    • Heart of the Country, England
    • ChanceGlass.net
Aesthetics after commercial expediency?
« Reply #1 on: November 15, 2006, 10:30:21 PM »
Definitely very odd looking – from an aesthetic point of view, odd numbered groups of three or five look more pleasing. The marriage of three to eight just doesn't work!

Is the divider fixed to the plate? I assumed it was.
David
► Chance Additions ◄
The 2nd volume of the domestic glassware of Chance Brothers
Contact ► Cortex Design ◄ to order any book

Support the Glass Message Board by finding glass through glass-seek.com


Offline Glen

  • Author
  • Members
  • ***
  • Posts: 2903
  • Gender: Female
    • Carnival Glass Research and Writing
Aesthetics after commercial expediency?
« Reply #2 on: November 15, 2006, 10:40:08 PM »
Maybe the plunger (for the divider) was used with other moulds (exterior). This match may have been simply expedient.

Also, with no exterior or interior moulded pattern, the panels (and subsequently the "out of sync" appearance) is emphasised.

Glen
Just released—Carnival from Finland & Norway e-book!
Also, Riihimäki e-book and Carnival from Sweden e-book.
Sowerby e-books—three volumes available
For all info see http://www.carnivalglassworldwide.com/
Copyright G&S Thistlewood

Support the Glass Message Board by finding a book via book-seek.com


Offline David E

  • Author
  • Members
  • ***
  • Posts: 3908
    • Heart of the Country, England
    • ChanceGlass.net
Aesthetics after commercial expediency?
« Reply #3 on: November 15, 2006, 10:45:18 PM »
Wouldn't the plunger have formed the complete inside of the bowl as well? Sorry, I'm digressing slightly... :roll: but this might show up elsewhere, as Glen was intimating.

What surprises me is that the designer ever allowed such an unholy trinity!
David
► Chance Additions ◄
The 2nd volume of the domestic glassware of Chance Brothers
Contact ► Cortex Design ◄ to order any book

Support the Glass Message Board by finding glass through glass-seek.com


Offline Frank

  • Author
  • Members
  • ***
  • Posts: 9508
  • Gender: Male
    • Glass history
    • Europe
    • Gateway
Aesthetics after commercial expediency?
« Reply #4 on: November 16, 2006, 12:31:44 AM »
Perhaps this was why the glass industry was so often criticised for poor use of designers. But then I recently came across an academic remark 1950ish, that artists had no place in industry!

Or was this the reason for that academics remark - this piece perhaps the design of an artist challenging the conventional ethic, with an classical art training that included the understanding and use of the golden ratios.

Support the Glass Message Board by finding a book via book-seek.com


Offline Ivo

  • Author
  • Members
  • ***
  • Posts: 8213
  • Gender: Male
Aesthetics after commercial expediency?
« Reply #5 on: November 16, 2006, 06:55:54 AM »
I would think the whole set of different plates & cups & whatnots was designed carefully - and somewhere at the last moment the factory decided they needed a plate with a divider, so they just matched the mould bottom with the mould top and gave it no thought at all.

Support the Glass Message Board by finding glass through glass-seek.com


Sklounion

  • Guest
Aesthetics after commercial expediency?
« Reply #6 on: November 16, 2006, 07:27:33 AM »
It surprises me that this happened, with this pattern, as the divider, (a shape characteristic of Inwald) is seen on other relatively plain patterns ie "Boule", where no ribs occur, "Argos" with six ribs, but its use for "Teplitz" looks quite incongruous.
I think this is probably factory improvisation as I cannot see Rudolf Schrötter actively having designed this.

Regards,

Marcus

Support the Glass Message Board by finding a book via book-seek.com


Offline Pinkspoons

  • Members
  • **
  • Posts: 3233
  • Gender: Male
    • UK
Aesthetics after commercial expediency?
« Reply #7 on: November 16, 2006, 10:17:36 AM »
Quote from: "Frank"
Perhaps this was why the glass industry was so often criticised for poor use of designers. But then I recently came across an academic remark 1950ish, that artists had no place in industry!


I remember reading in a book to do with the history of glass (the name of the book escapes me now, but it was probably The History Of Glass, or Glass: A History...  :lol: ) a similar remark from around the 1940s/50s by some chap who, if I recall correctly, was on a panel for some design award-giving board, decrying all the art-glass and glass designers as pointless frivolity and that the most important advancement in 20th century glass was Pyrex.

But within a decade or so the awards which were going to plain utilitarian glass from this design board were, the book noted, instead all going to decorative glass designers and manufacturers.

Support the Glass Message Board by finding glass through glass-seek.com


 

SMF spam blocked by CleanTalk
Visit the Glass Encyclopedia
link to glass encyclopedia
Visit the Online Glass Museum
link to glass museum


This website is provided by Angela Bowey, PO Box 113, Paihia 0247, New Zealand