Glass Discussion & Research. NO IDENTIFICATION REQUESTS here please. > Belgium and the Netherlands Glass

Wirth's of Dolhain in Belgium - any info?

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josordoni:
I have a lovely little opal glass Edwardian miniature vase, hand painted with a scene of Folkestone on at th e moment,( Here is the link) that I bought with some crested china.  I think that the factory is Dolhain Glass Works in Belgium, but I don't know what the Wirths bit of the name is. Does anyone have any info on this factory?

thanks!

Ivo:
Yes the answer is, there is no information at all about Dolhain Wirths. I have quite a collection of Dolhain souvenir pieces, from as far afield as Whitley bay, Switzerland, Belgium, France and Holland. As far as I have been able to grasp the company was a decorator, not a glass maker because they never featured in any of the trade journals. They must have been located in Dolhain, a smal village on the Belgian side of the border near Maastricht. The company name was Wirths. I suspect their blanks were supplied by Val St. Lambert - but they may have imported them from Schneider or Legras too... It is uncertain when they worked but it seems likely they were active at least until the  thirties - but as said, no written record has been found in any publication so far. Do let me know if you find out, will you?

ChrisStewart:
HI,
     Has any more information come to light about Dolhain Wirths?

Regards

Chris

SNJ:
A bit of an old thread, but...

Google throws up a very commonly repeated idea that the 'Dolhain Glass Factory' supplied the blanks, which were then decorated by M. Wirths. Trouble is, not a single one gives a source, so presumably one copies from another who copies from another, ad infinitum. There is an intriguing pdf / ebook but it's flagged up as a potential source of virus so I'm not opening that beggar.

Can't find any other references to a glass factory in Dolhain (I checked in Dutch and French, too) so it remains a bit of an enigma.

Ivo:
Since the exhibition and book (2009) about the Dolhain glass maker Pierre Jost, at least we now have some further insight.

Pierre Jost was a glass artist who operated his studio in the village of Dolhain from 1918 to 1936. They decorated around 250.000 pieces per year, employing 40 - mostly female - decorators. Jost, born in 1885, first entered in the Wirths factory in 1901, learning the trade.

Blanks were bought from outside - mostly from Val St. Lambert but also from other glassworks in Wallonia (Scailmont and Herbatte).  In 1922, Wirths moved to Verviers so the mention of both Dolhain and Wirths on the same piece means it is pre- 1922.

Jost stayed in Dolhain and opened his own workshop, making the same items that Wirths made, later expanding with other decorated pieces - until 1938.

Wirths in Verviers did not survive the economic slump either.

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