Topic: Ludwig Kny glasses?

[BJB]

Hi,

I have picked up a load of Stuart glasses, most of them pre 1950's, and these three really stand out.

On the bowl of each are three fish and some weed, and underneath the mark is Stuart with the little curly bit under the "t"

I wonder if they were designed by Ludwig Kny?

http://i9.tinypic.com/66m78cw.jpg

Many thanks

Barbara

[Bernard C]

Barbara — Checking with Benson & Hayhurst, your beautiful glasses are not typical of the Stuart patterns shown carrying the L Kny acid etched mark (at least until his demise in 1937), chosen by Stuart's sales and marketing team to be promoted as Ludwig Kny signed designer ranges.   However that is light years away from saying that Ludwig Kny didn't design them, quite a different matter altogether.

This failure to clearly distinguish between a mid- to late-1930s marketing strategy and the reality of what the designers actually designed is by far the worst fault in publications such as Benson & Hayhurst and Reynolds (Walsh / Clyne Farquharson) and has led to serious confusion amongst collectors and dealers.   Yet Roger Dodsworth had already obliquely drawn attention to this problem in BGbtW, published twenty years ago, as, under item 333, a Royal Brierley jug carrying the Keith Murray mark, he says Marketed as part of the Keith Murray range although not designed by him.

Later ... and I've found your glasses.   BGbtW No. 317 shows an identical cocktail set with a glass-stoppered shaker and four glasses (two shown in the photograph).   Height of the glasses 4¾".   Shaker marked L Kny, glasses Stuart ENGLAND.   So your glasses were designed by Ludwig Kny AND were marketed by Stuart, at least initially, as a signed designer range.   Stuart pattern No. 27015, introduced 1934.    Dodsworth describes the stems as step cut.

Brilliant.   I am green with envy!

Bernard C. 

[BJB]

Hi Bernard,


Many many thanks for all your help once again, it is so very kind of you. I must add the Doddsworth book to my wish list.

Its a shame that the marvelous designers didn't get a lot more credit for their work, it must have been very frustrating for them.

Why did Stuart decide to sell a designer range, apart from the money aspect of course ? Was the 1930's like today very desinger concious?

Thank you once again for all your help,

Barbara

[Frank]

Hardly, there was some exhortation for the British glass industry to make design more integral - usually from government commissioned reports. But generally they did not treat it very seriously until after WW2. Most of the pre-war designers were not glass designers per. se. and Industrial design was a a slow off the ground discipline in UK Glass. The department set up in Edinburgh Art school was the first in the country to specifically target glass design.

[BJB]

So it was more because they had to rather than because they wanted to?

Can you imagine the fuss today if no-one was credited for their designs, especially those pop and soap stars who market the image as well as the product!

(usually the perfume or clothes are as tacky as the person whose name is on the range  )

[Frank]

Two decades of manipulation by the media have made people name conscious. At first it was a logo on the outside but these days almost every item of clothing and accessory has become an afterthought to the presentation of the brand. One result being that many brands no longer relate directly to a living designer, except that someone bought their name. It is on the same level as Bernard's mention of Keith Murray and those insisting that glass designers sign their work.

Relying on the 'name' or signature only encourages the practise. For glass the only solution is peer reviewed web-sites that document their sources of information and try to explain what it is that makes a design or its maker clear. There is a small industry in Scotland steaming off labels, tearing them to pieces and spreading the remnants across several items... not all of which are Monart.

[BJB]

And also defacing pieces of glass with signatures of well known designers even though they never worked for the company, or company names on glass that never was anywhere near them. Chismism isn't it   

[Frank]

Yep, but you missed an R Chrismism 

[Bernard C]

While you two are drifting off into a happy reverie, contemplating your respective navels, I would just like to point out that the Keith Murray mark on BGbtW item 333 is a perfectly genuine factory-applied mark, not a fake.   It's just that the piece wasn't designed by Murray.

Bernard C. 

[BJB]

Oops sorry Bernard   

(BTW I can now see my navel when sitting for the first time in years, the diet is starting to work  )

Sorry Frank I knew it began with C and ended with ism but forgot the rest