pamela — No, it can't be Jobling, whose 1930s art glass is well known and fully recorded, including a few patterns that never went into production.
I am wondering whether it only being found in pink is related to the use of both thick and thin glass for optical effect. Many colours would just not work properly.
Eighteen months ago I was so close, but unwilling to make the final step to the explanation. If you look at each pear's profile from the side, you will see that they are slightly flattened. However, when you look at them from the front, they are mouth-wateringly real. Why? The answer is simply that a semi-opaque material like this pink glass gives the illusion of depth as it gets thicker. This should be easy to quantify. Suppose that this pink glass increases the real depth by 25%, then to produce a life-like sculpture, the mouldmaker has to reduce the depth of surface features on his moulding by 20% to compensate. Each different type of glass will require its own particular compensation factor.
So my conclusion is that the decision to use this particular pink glass was included into the design process from the outset. The mould was sculpted to work properly only with this glass.
Now, on to attribution. I don't believe that British/German/Bohemian designers and mouldmakers ever appreciated this need for compensation in the depth of surface features. To them, perfection was an exact miniature. You see this particularly in the breasts of their lady centrepieces, already suffering from unsympathetic packaging to re-shape them, and, by the use of glass, apparently increased in size.
The Franckhauser Jobling jade lady has quite different breasts, which are reduced in depth like the pears in the bowl, and retain their natural shape. The outcome is quite beautiful.
Information on French glass design and mouldmaking is difficult to find, indeed the only material I have found is that in Baker & Crowe. All the Lalique references I consulted maintain a deafening silence on Etienne Franckhauser. Yet it was the partnership of Lalique, the ideas man, and Franckhauser, the model or mould maker, that produced the amazing glass. It is quite likely that Franckhauser had competitors in France working to a similar standard, either in-house or freelance (or both), so it is not really possible to attribute the three pears bowl specifically to him and his workshop.
Perhaps "
Le Style Franckhauser" would be acceptable.
Acknowledgement:
Grateful thanks to Jeanette Hayhurst. At a recent glass fair I bought a green Walsh/Douglas waterlily and iris bowl, the twin of
BGbtW #114. On p38 of
Glass of the '20s & '30s, Jeanette describes a vase in the same range. Her words got me thinking ......
Bernard C.
Topic: Three Pears Bowl - ID = Sowerby "Enid" pattern powder bowl (Read 15717 times)
