Glass Message Board
Glass Discussion & Research. NO IDENTIFICATION REQUESTS here please. => Murano & Italy Glass => Topic started by: busterj on June 16, 2013, 01:36:52 PM
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Greeting's Everyone,
I've had this bowl for just over 20 years and was told it was by Seguso. I had no reason to question this attribution, it looks like his work.
Over the years I have yet to see another piece like it. The closest I could come up with was his series of Macchia, http://tinyurl.com/mkrxyk6 .
I'm hoping that someone here may have some info about this piece. Particularly the technique.
Thanks in advance,
rob
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Good evening, Rob. I've been doing a bit of searching to locate your bowl. It looks most to me like the work of Archimede Seguso or Anzolo Fuga, but I couldn't verify either... yet. I wasn't sure what you wanted to know about the technique. It looks like large murrines to me in uranium glass. I can tell it is a very good quality bowl. Super nice. There is something about the bowl that reminds me of Fuga's "Windows" pieces.
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Please ignore -- changed my mind. ;)
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Thanks so much Anita for taking taking the time to research and respond about this bowl.
Concerning the technique, I thought maybe there was a specific term used to describe it simular to the Macchia line of glass, large murrines works though.
Hopefully others will have more info on it.
Thanks again,
rob
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Hi rob,
first -- it is a beautiful bowl, looks to me like it came from a top maker. (Archimede Seguso was my first thought, too.)
I looked through my books, but no match.
Closest I could find is a vase in Judith Miller's "Glas des 20. Jahrhunderts" (= 20th century glass); it has silver instead of gold, and blue "dots" instead of triangles (with dark-puple outline like in yours). Unfortunately no attribution given, just "free shaped vase Murano glass, mid to end of 20th century", and a prize guide of 300-400 Euro.
The vase has a shape similar to some " Macchie Ambra Verde" pieces btw...
Sorry, so not much help from my side.
Michael
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Yes it could well be A.S. but I looked through all my books and nothing remotely like this technique. The light pulveri is used by him a lot but not unique. Could have been SvdA as well. Possibly an A.S. line that was not popular at the time. Very interesting.
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Thanks Michael for your input.
It's a piece that I actually don't have out on display but one day while looking at my photo's it occurred to me I haven't seen anything remotely like it before. Which is odd considering the amount of glass I've looked at on line and in books. Hopefully at some point a simular piece will show up.
Ardy,
When you mentioned the light pulveri, is it the gold leaf you're referring too? I unfortunately don't have a photo that shows the gold all that well. I'm wondering though is this also considered pulveri. Thanks for your time.
rob
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Hi Buster yes it is the gold but more how it is applied. Pulveri (powder)is the name and Sfumato (nuanced) the technique. It is the fine smoky like trails that A.S. used so often in his pieces. I have a wonderful bowl that utilises this technique very well. Will attach picture. Still I am sure you know this.
Having looked at your reference and done some more digging around it seems highly likely this is Archimede Seguso but without any further reference it is hard to say for sure. I have a couple of pieces with his label on them and never seen them anywhere. Still he was manufacturing for a very long time and would have done many lines that did not make a long run. Mostly what we see are his bread and butter lines. To find something serious is not easy there are many collectors still prepared to pay thousands for a merletto vase of some size.
It is an interesting piece and I would not be selling it.
regards
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Thanks again Ardy.
Theres so many layers to the techniques that were/ are used by Murano glass blowers. I tend stay comfortably inside the box in regards to how pieces are made, if it walks like a duck, it's a duck. But clearly this duck is in disguise! So you figure that sfumato was also a technique used on my bowl?
The bowel you posted is beautiful and looks to be very large.
rob
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I've been looking at this piece fora couple of days now, unable to make my mind up about it. It's very similar to a B & T piece I have, except in the B & T piece the blue spot/white spots look like machia, thick globs of glass dropped on the surface of the gather. And I tend to agree that the blue in your piece look more look primitive murrines. The gold is from thin sheets of gold foil applied to the gather, rather than powder sprinkled on. I'm not sure of the sfumato either. It's originally a painting term meaning a very gradual, barely discernible shift from one shade or colour to another, and I don't see that here, although it's pretty clear in Ardy's piece.
I think I'd lean more to B & T for this one. The company did use large primitive murrines including some triangular ones they called tessere. And B & T loved their gold foil.
Whatever techniques were used and whoever made the it, it's a vey nice piece.
David
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Yes David see what you mean but it has some of the strength of Seguso and not so much of the fine work of B & T from what I have seen. I am reasonably sure it is A.S. and here is a similar shaped piece claimed to be A.S. but could be SvdA.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/370838067611
BTW Love your bowl
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I've been pondering for a couple of days whether to mention anything about the sfumato techniques. Sfumato, of course, means smoke. It is used in two different ways when it comes to the art forms. To painters the term means the gradual shading from one color to another, so that there are no distinct lines. It is what makes paintings looks so different to coloring books. In art glass it may also be used to describe the glass that is exposed to smoke to give it a smoky gray appearance. Barbini is thought to have developed this technique when he was at VAMSA. It (or a descendent of the technique) is still in use today to make much of the "grey effect" that we see. I have to say that "grey effect" is so common now that it may be made using a simpler technique. I don't know.
In her book on Archimede Seguso, Pina describes Arhimedes' polveri pieces as sfumato. There is nothing wrong with that, because the technique does fit with the painter's definition of the term. I prefer to use the word polveri, because it is more descriptive of the technique used. I reserve the word "sfumato" to pieces that were made using smoke. Because I'm not sure if all "grey effect" is made using smoke, I simply call it "grey effect" so I don't have to figure it out.
Gold foil is not polveri or sfumato. It is just a whisper thin sheet of gold rolled onto the gather before the glass is expanded. Polveri is actually ground (pulverized) colored glass. Gold foil is often used with the colored glass to help richly blend the shades, but itself is not "polveri."
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I just thought of a special circumstance where gold could be put into glass, then the glass be pulverized. In this case, the color would indeed be polveri.
I think I'll go back to my safe zone of not discussing techniques now.
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Thanks Anita and it is an area of confusion. When I bought my first Seguso piece and you (or someone here) mentioned pulveri I went looking for a description and it seemed that it was as you say a powder, although I thought it was gold, added to the glass. My understanding of Sfumato is a description of the smoke like trails of gold or other things in many A.Seguso and other makers pieces .
It would be good to get a clear understanding of these techniques but where do you stop? There are hundreds of them I suppose.