Glass Message Board
Glass Identification - Post here for all ID requests => Glass => Topic started by: ckscot on July 10, 2020, 02:19:40 PM
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This 11" high jug features a slightly scary looking naked baby and some over-excited looking dancers amongst tendrils and foliage, (the matching wine glass only has the foliage and angels). Can anyone give me an idea of where this might have been made from and from what period? And what does all this engraving represent - I've googled and can't find a classical theme that fits? The base has a wide polished pontil mark.
Many thanks in advance.
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I can't quite make out what you're calling foliage on the glass, but it looks a little bit like eidelweiss to me.
A motif I associate with Bohemian origins.
That baby is pure evil! :o
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Here are better pictures of the "foliage". The one on the wine glass is clearer, but on the jug there is a bell like flower on one end, which doesn't so much look like edelweiss.
And yes, I wouldn't want to wake up with this baby beside me in the mornings. . . . .
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It's not looking like eidelweiss, any more. The "clusters" are positioned all up a stem and don't have the internal flowery bit.
They did look as if they could be, at first. Sorry for the wild goose chase.
This is looking more and more like an individual art sort of set, rather than anything mass produced. :)
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Maybe the ugly baby is a changeling. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changeling
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Hmm, I hadn't thought of that. Could be, then what are the dancers all about? I also somehow don't get the sense that this is British - not sure why. Any thoughts?
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It does appear to be depicting something quite fantastical. Which is not really a "british" glass style. ;D
The cutting of the musculature on the baby is quite Eastern European - Scandi or Czech, but fits better with more modern styles than traditional fairy tales.
I'm quite keen on the changeling idea, it would fit with the "angels" or fairies.
I'm not sure what one is doing with something that looks like a waffle iron, though. ;D
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Learning all about fairies today! Perhaps whereas in Britain we might give silver christening sets, in some some places you get a weird jug to ward off evil spirits.
The engraving on the jug looks to be a copy of the painting near the top of this page: http://www.fairyist.com/tag/fairy-questions/page/2/ You might be able to do a reverse image search and find out about the origins of the painting. The Scandinavians seem to talk of trolls rather than fairies, so probably not from them. No mention of waffle irons so far....
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That has to be the image copied onto glass - brilliant sleuthing!
I can't help wondering now, though if changelings were invented in order to give folk an excuse to get rid of babies born with disabilites...
Schubert wrote the song The Erl Konig - which was about a fairy king who stole and killed a child. So these stories are in German literature.
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Thanks ;D Makes you glad we live when we do...but maybe in 200 years, our ancestors will say something similar. The wiki link mentions folklore in Germany as well as parts of Britain and Ireland, Scandinavia (but trolls), Poland, and Spain.
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Could you enlarge your photos to 600 x 400 pixels so the detail of the folded foot etc and the shape of the ewer can be seen more clearly please?
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Gosh, that is brilliant sleuthing indeed! I now have a whole new field to start exploring.
I had the same uneasy feeling about changelings and disability. But I like the idea that this set might have been given to ward off evil spirits. That seems sadly appropriate in these strange days.
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I think the waffle iron is a lantern, you can just see the small lines depicting rays of light. A pity because a waffle iron would have been much better. ;D
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Sorry, I missed the post about resizing last night. I'm having real trouble resizing. I'm doing it using Preview on my Mac, which is giving me very misleading idea of how big the files are. Even setting the size at 300x 400 pixels this site is saying my file is too big ??? But Here is a new photo that that I have managed to shrink sufficiently. It shows the overall shape more clearly. And yes, sadly, the waffle iron is indeed a lantern.
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Willliam Blake did a painting called Oberon, Titania and Puck with fairies dancing and other of his paintings come up in a similar style - that weird light effect etc.
https://www.william-blake.org/Oberon-Titania-And-Puck-With-Fairies-Dancing.html
The baby has a face like Puck :-X
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Did you see the link ekimp gave earlier, m? - scroll down a little and it's exactly the same beastie-baby as depicted. Not just a bit alike.
http://www.fairyist.com/tag/fairy-questions/page/2/
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Hi Sue :D
Yes I did. However, that set me wondering where, in turn, that depiction may have been inspired from. That thought process took me back to William Blake's painting. I know .... convoluted ;D
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So the jug and goblet both have a folded foot.
The glass looks clear and I don't think they are that old. Anyone agree?
Perhaps they were studio made and then engraved?
I was thinking about Royal Brierley or something as well, but the folded foot doesn't seem right really.
Again,just thinking out loud - please step in and disagree :)
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The images got me onto Margaret MacDonald etc., then I got a bit lost in Benjamin Britten's Midsummer Night's Dream costumes and the depiction of Puck there, and then his confusion with Bacchus in legend. Not to Blake. Yet. ;D
I'm not at all sure about age myself. I can't help but be reminded a little bit of the Alison Kinnaird Storm Lantern, which was done in the early '70s.
https://www.glassmessages.com/index.php/topic,37022.msg202066.html#msg202066
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I love it when the Storm Lantern gets another outing :D
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Nigel has it, now. His turn. ;D
But there are similarities in the fantasticality, and the quality of work. It's not the same sort of work, but the quality is there.
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Flying tree, do you mention the folded foot because of the concentric ring you can see on the foot that looks like that of a folded foot? If I zoom in on the photos it looks like the ring might be a dashed engraved line - part of the decoration - like you see sometimes on engraved items? The photos are a bit small though and it might be my screen, Ckscot, does it have a folded foot?
If you search the brothers Grimm fairy tale The Changeling, there’s an illustration that comes up by Mabel Lucie Attwell with the baby sat on a mushroom, but no dancers. I like the storm lantern.
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Was MLA capable of producing such an evil looking baby?
Scary rhymes though!
"Please remember, don't forget,
Never leave the bathroom wet,
Nor leave the soap still in the water,
That's a thing we never oughter.
Nor leave the towel upon the floor,
Nor keep the bath an hour or more,
When other folks are wanting one,
Please don't forget, it isn't done."
I haven't forgotten!
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I think Sue(M) is on the right track with the German reference as their folklore on this has a long history. The jug looks German to me and difficult to age without seeing it, but early 1900's? It's funny but I've been singing Steeleye Span's Elf Call all day. :)
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Now you've set me off on "When Maddy Dances". ;D
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ah, I cannot enlarge the pictures really. So what I 'see' is a folded foot. Is it not?
If not, then that might change the feeling about it being older.
If not, then I can see this being a kind of 1905 type piece. However, the shape doesn't shout Bohemian to me although the handle shape does ???. Maybe German, maybe English?
Is it heavy?
Is it a claret jug? I presume not given the shape of the glass in the set? Is it a water jug then?
The body would be described as 'pear shaped' maybe?
The handle has been applied bottom up. So it could be an older piece perhaps?
Please can we see a good picture large of the pontil mark? If it's large I'd be inclined to think Stevens and Williams or Thomas Webb as a possible option to explore. I honestly don't know much about these things but the handle might put me off them as options (at least on first thoughts), as would the folded foot - unless it's not folded obviously. However a large polished pontil mark would put me off Bohemian as a start point.
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I'm still having trouble resizing, so not sure how good the quality of this is, but here is one of the foot showing the pontil mark. I hadn't heard of a folded foot before now (embarrassed face), but I don't think that the ewer or the glass have one. The foot measures 10.5 cm in diameter, the pontil mark measures about 5.5 cm in diameter. The decoration around the foot is a series of ovals separated by two vertical lines, all engraved on the underside of the foot. It weighs 670g, which seems quite light to me, and the foot doesn't seem to have very much in the way of wear marks so it's maybe not that old?
I have been going cross-eyed looking at images of changelings and babies on mushrooms on google. I wouldn't recommend it. I have sent an email to the fairy investigation society (!!) to see if they can give any info on the painting of a changeling on their website. I will keep you posted.
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ok,thank you! the photo isn't huge but the very large polished pontil mark can be seen as can the engraved decoration around the base of the foot. So, not a folded foot.
Thanks. More food for thought :)
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We need to remember that engraving can be done on old bits of glass. This was not neccessarily made and decorated at the same time or in the same place.
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Update to my long message below: AHA!
The painting the engraving is taken from is by Richard Dadd and is indeed a painting of Puck - 1841:
http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2008/a-great-british-collection-the-pictures-collected-by-sir-david-and-lady-scott-sold-to-benefit-the-finnis-scott-foundation-l08137/lot.104.html
My earlier this morning musings before I found this:
Now I've seen the decoration on the foot, I'm thinking it's old, maybe late 19th. And given the subject matter of the decoration I think it's contemporary to the piece because I'm not sure that's a subject matter that would have been 'desirable' in recent times.
Is it also engraved with dots along the handle?
Could you take a photograph of it against a white background so the colour of the glass can be seen please?
Oh,and it's possible the 'baby' is in fact a pixie/elf hence his facial expression, left to replace the stolen child described here in a painting of changeling by Joseph Bouvier:
https://www.leicestergalleries.com/browse-artwork-detail/MTQ4ODE=
The inspiration for the pixie/elf on the toadstool may have come from Sir Joshua Reynolds depiction of Puck?:
Here in the Royal Collection -
https://www.rct.uk/collection/641466/puck
and
See also my reply #14 where I said it looked like Puck ;D, which is a weird connection in my brain given the Puck in the link below is an adult version of the 'baby' in the Dadd painting an on your jug.
https://www.glassmessages.com/index.php/topic,69722.msg388527.html#msg388527
https://www.william-blake.org/Oberon-Titania-And-Puck-With-Fairies-Dancing.html
ok, so now we know the painting. This is the provenance of the painting:
PROVENANCE
Henry Farrer (1821-1906), of Green Hammerton Hall, Yorkshire, by whom purchased at the Royal Society of British Artists, 1841;
Major Thomas Birchall, of Ribbleton Hall, Preston, by 1857, and thence by family descent;
John Rickett, 1964;
J. S. Maas and Co, London, where bought by Sir David Scott, 2 December 1975 for £11,500.
This is where it was exhibited and when:
London, Society of British Artists, 1841, no. 603;
Manchester, Art Treasures Exhibition, 1857, no. 335 (lent by Thomas Birchall);
London, Tate Gallery; Hull, Ferens Art Gallery; Wolverhampton, Municipal Art Gallery; Bristol, City Art Gallery, The Late Richard Dadd 1817-1886, 1974-75, no. 58;
Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland, Sunshine and Shadow - The David Scott Collection of Victorian Paintings, 1991, no. 4;
Vienna, Kunstforum, Kunst und Wahn, 1997;
Japan, Saitama Museum of Modern Art and Ashikaga Museum of Art, Fairy Painting in Britain, 2003-2004, no. 13;
On loan to Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, 2007 to 2008
It also seems to have appeared as a reference or as a depicted plate in the Art Union journal in 1841 and then in literature throughout the 1960s onwards according to that Sotheby's link
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Nice find for the origins of the painting. I don’t disagree with anything regarding the painting and a possible age of late 19thC...except for a small fly in the ointment which is the mix of styles. In the engraving on the jug taken from the painting, the dancers around the changeling/puck are the fairies yet on the glasses they have also shown a more modern depiction of fairies with wings. That is a mix of two different styles, not a pure copy of the painting.
According to the fairest.com, wings were first illustrated on fairies in around 1800 but they also say “Twentieth-century fairy sightings often describe beings with wings, something that would never have happened in the nineteenth century”. I don’t imagine the engraver would have mixed styles by adding the winged fairies unless they were familiar in popular culture at the time? It’s as though the winged fairies were added so that the subject was understood. Maybe early 20thC?
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I am bowled over by the whole-hearted way you are all contributing to this thread, such a rich array of information - I am learning so much (about glass and fairies) Here is the jug against a white background as requested. Also a photo of the handle showing the decoration. For the first time I have noticed the fold underneath the top of the handle is very rough to the touch, as if it has been broken off or just very roughly applied - which seems unlikely given the delicacy of the rest of the piece. Not sure if you can see this in the photo.
Another small difference from the painting is that all the fairies in the glass version are clothed - except one who is up higher on the glass, whilst they are naked in the painting.
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Nice find for the origins of the painting. I don’t disagree with anything regarding the painting and a possible age of late 19thC...except for a small fly in the ointment which is the mix of styles. In the engraving on the jug taken from the painting, the dancers around the changeling/puck are the fairies yet on the glasses they have also shown a more modern depiction of fairies with wings. That is a mix of two different styles, not a pure copy of the painting.
According to the fairest.com, wings were first illustrated on fairies in around 1800 but they also say “Twentieth-century fairy sightings often describe beings with wings, something that would never have happened in the nineteenth century”. I don’t imagine the engraver would have mixed styles by adding the winged fairies unless they were familiar in popular culture at the time? It’s as though the winged fairies were added so that the subject was understood. Maybe early 20thC?
I think there are fairies with wings on the jug as well. There appears to be two in the most recent pictures? And possibly they aren't fairies but cherubs instead?
Artistic license to represent as the artist wants to. They may or may not have bowed to popular culture. They may have been depicting fairies with wings as per around 1800, or their understanding of depictions they'd seen. Perhaps it was early 20th century and got mixed up with tinker bell? Always possible. I don't know what the source of that information from Fairest.com is about fairies never being described as 'with wings' in literature of the 19th century.
If we read the information Sotheby's have put on about Dadd and the acceptance of his paintings, it shows a great breadth of artistic license and mixing of inspirations as subjects and within the paintings.
Also this description indicates this painting was about Puck and so too the nature of the subject for the jug and glass, rather than it being about a 'changeling' (I don't like to think of these items as being about a 'changeling'):
'The pictorial treatment in both of Dadd's Dream paintings was, however, entirely personal and thoughtful. The symbolical imagery represents a meditation on the play itself, which makes constant reference to moonlight and moon imagery. Dadd too uses the moon to magical effect, placing it as the source of light behind the figure of Puck and leaving the foreground mysteriously shrouded in shadow, with a back-lit border of foliage and sparkling dewdrops framing the front of the composition like a proscenium arch. Beyond the darkness Puck, encircled by dancing fairies on a grassy stage, is picked out by the cool moonlight, emphasising the theatrical nature of the scene: but it is also a view into a miniature landscape inhabited by elementals who are more akin to classical nymphs and dryads than the elves and pixies of many of the artists who followed in this genre. If the childlike figure of Puck at the centre seems slightly incongruous in this company, a sheet of pencil sketches (Fig 2. sold in these rooms, 24 November 1977, lot 74) shows that he was originally intended to hold a bow in his left hand, suggesting that Dadd wished him to be seen also as Cupid, the true presiding genius of the play. '
Interestingly, I still maintain the face in the painting of 'Puck' by Dadd, looks like the face in the depiction by Sir Joshua Reynolds and definitely reminded me of the face of the adult Puck in the painting of Puck by William Blake.
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/blake-oberon-titania-and-puck-with-fairies-dancing-n02686
Perhaps the Blake and Dadd depictions came from inspiration from the Joshua Reynolds engraving?
I can now see the engraving all the way up the outside of the handle of the jug. I'd say that was Bohemian in style.
I think having larger and clearer photographs is necessary for any further understanding of the engraving etc. to be honest.
That jug handle shape makes me think Bohemian production for some reason,as does the style of engraving. I'm thinking Harrach specifically, but other possibles might be Lobmeyr or say Riedel?? However there were many Bohemian engravers here in the late 19th century for example, so it could be piece made in England or Scotland for example, but engraved by a Bohemian engraver perhaps.
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see reply above:
And for comparison of the engraving of Puck, here is a tumbler engraved with cherubs, being sold as 'Designed by Michael Powolny, engraved by Max Rossler' Marked for Lobmeyr, Vienna. c.
There are some comparisons with the engraving depiction and detail of the bodies of the cherubs and the body of Puck. Although the eyes are very different.
https://www.1stdibs.com/furniture/decorative-objects/vases-vessels/vases/art-glass-tumbler-michael-powolny-lobmeyr-circa-1915/id-f_18286012/
We need to see much larger photograph and clearer depiction of the detail on your jug and goblet. Perhaps take them with a black sheet rolled up inside? I don't know how to advise you to upload them to be larger in detail as I don't use an Iphone/pad.
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Thanks all. I will come back with better quality photos later this afternoon.
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Going back to origins of mythical creatures, Puck was based on Bacchus, as well as getting mixed up with Cupid.
The famous Cottingly Fairy fake photographs, with winged fairies, date to 1917.
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ooh I didn't know that Sue.
My knowledge of Shakespeare is very limited :)
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Puck, alias Robin Goodfellow, predates Shakespeare, I think.
(I spent my childhood with my nose stuck in ancient myths, legends, and fairy tales.)
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Finally, I have some, hopefully, better quality photos of the jug/ewer.
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! that's rather gorgeous :)
And there's no signature or mark on the bottom anywhere?
Just including another link to the Lobmeyr becher I posted above so the engraving can be compared. I'm not suggesting it's the same engraver, but the becher is marked for Lobmeyr.
https://www.1stdibs.com/furniture/decorative-objects/vases-vessels/vases/art-glass-tumbler-michael-powolny-lobmeyr-circa-1915/id-f_18286012/
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There's no mark on the base or anywhere else on either piece. I have searched with my magnifying glass in case there was anything hidden in the foliage, but no luck.
Thanks for the Lobmeyr link. Looking at them both close up I think the treatment of the hair on the figures is actually finer/more delicate in my ewer !? especially in the photo 'Puck 3'.
Re the resemblance between Puck in the Dadd and the Reynolds paintings, the Sothebys catalogue note actually refers to it, so you are spot on!
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Referring back to Ekimp's post on 13th July regarding the wings, Wiki has this to say
'Descriptions
Fairies are generally described as human in appearance and having magical powers. Diminutive fairies of various kinds have been reported through centuries, ranging from quite tiny to the size of a human child.[7] These small sizes could be magically assumed, rather than constant.[8] Some smaller fairies could expand their figures to imitate humans.[9] On Orkney, fairies were described as short in stature, dressed in dark grey, and sometimes seen in armour.[10] In some folklore, fairies have green eyes. Some depictions of fairies show them with footwear, others as barefoot. Wings, while common in Victorian and later artworks, are rare in folklore; fairies flew by means of magic, sometimes perched on ragwort stems or the backs of birds.[11] Modern illustrations often include dragonfly or butterfly wings.[12]'
(My bolding)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy
The source reference is : Briggs (1976), The Fairies in English Tradition and Literature, p. 249 and page 148
I have to say I absolutely hate a reference to 'Modern' without a specification of exactly what time period that constitutes. I remember reading 'Modern Short Stories' written by ... for exams and realising it had been written in the 1930s. So, I don't know what period Briggs means by 'Modern'.
However, on re-reading that sentence out loud with emphasis, I wonder if his use of the word 'modern' refers to Victorian or later, as opposed to the 'folklore' depictions and flying 'by magic' he mentions at the start of the sentence?
Not that helpful in the end as it infers the piece could be Victorian or later I guess ;D