ART NOUVEAU LOETZ IRIDESCENT GLASS VASE Sterling Overlay with Swan Amongst Water Lilies /Bulrushes, CIRCA1900

Hi
Everyone.
I have to be patient util august 3 to get my fourth LOETZ vase, the seller just confirm receive my payment, but mention going to a business trip, so i ask him the permission to use the auction pictures temporaly, when i receive it, i will take my own pictures.
I have to say, i am really surprise and shock to win this vase for cheap, i was prepared to pay way more, my last bid at the last second was 3 time higher then the final price, at my Laptop i am frozen for minute.......
This moment finaly arrived, here it is,,,,and it is a famous one, last one sold at CHRISTIE'S,SALE #5303 —CHRISTIE'S STYLE & SPIRIT,16 September 2014,London, South Kensington.
http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot/a-loetz-iridescent-glass-vase-with-silver-5825588-details.aspx

Loetz Iridescent Glass Vase With Silver overlay Circa 1900, the pale green glass body covered with 'Delph' coloured iridescence, overlaid in silver with a swan swimming amoungs water lilies and bulrushes, silver stamped Sterling and feint mark attributed to the International Silver Company of Meriden, Connecticut (picture 4)
Polished pontil(picture 1), Magnificent Swan silver overlay (picture 2)
and bulrushes on the neck (picture 3)Absoutly phenomenal piece of work.
This vase stand 12.50 inch tall, 6 inch at the widest portion, 2.75 inch at the base, the neck as 2 inch diameter reaching to the top, the top rim have ,75 inch opening flare at 3 inch.

Thanks for Viewing.
Alan

---------------------------------------LOETZ-----------------------------------------

The Art Nouveau period was the golden age for Loetz glass and it was the founder’s grandson, Max Ritter von Spaun, who guided the firm both financially and artistically through its most successful period. It was Spaun who pushed through the development of iridescence and he took out patents in 1895 and 1898 for metallic lustres and colours. Loetz was awarded a Grand Prix at the Paris Universal Exhibition in 1900.
The silver appliqué was mostly added in the United States and the two most successful companies were the Alvin Manufacturing Company on Long Island and a group of smaller silversmiths who worked together as the International Silver Company of Meriden, Connecticut.

------------------------The International Silver Company-------------------------

By the late 19th century, central Connecticut’s nationally-significant concentration of silver-plated cutlery and tableware manufacturers was some fifty years old. The industry developed from 18th- and early 19thcentury makers of utilitarian and ornamental products using malleable metal alloys including pewter and Brittania.2 Industrial production of silver-plated wares with electroplating, once a scientific curiosity,
began in 1838 at the firm of G. R. & H. Elkington in Birmingham, England, and their process was patented in the United States in 1840. At about the same time, J. O. Mead in Philadelphia began experiments with the electroplating technique that he later used as the basis of a partnership with William and Asa Rogers of Hartford in 1845. Within a year Reed & Barton in Taunton, Massachusetts, were also producing silver-plated Britannia ware. Although Brittania remained a base metal for plated wares into
the early 20th century, it was gradually supplanted after the Civil War by more durable German silver, also known as nickel silver, an alloy of copper with, typically, 20 percent each of nickel and zinc (Gibb 1943; May 1947).

------------------------The Meriden Brittania Company---------------------------

The Meriden Brittania Company, established in 1852 as an amalgamation of several Meriden and Wallingford manufacturers led by the silverware-marketing brothers Horace and Dennis Wilcox, grew dramatically into the late 1890s with additional acquisitions of local manufacturers including the original Rogers Bros. operations, a plant in Hamilton, Ontario, and sales offices in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and London. The well-known Rogers Bros. 1847 line of silver-plated ware was a prominent part of Meriden Brittania’s marketing efforts. Despite its name, this largest of Meriden’s silverware makers used German silver for most of its products long before 1898, when the owners launched a much larger organization with a name more appropriate to their principal wares. The International Silver Company, incorporated in New Jersey, initially merged Meriden Brittania with twelve other firms in Connecticut, Lyons, NY, and Toronto, and by 1905 had acquired fifteen other cutlery and tableware manufacturers in Connecticut, New York City, and Niagara Falls, Canada. As seen by Reed and Barton, the principal competitor in the silverware business left out of the merger, the new company was organized
to facilitate sales through consolidation of advertising, and profits through control of competition. International Silver continued to use the different factories it acquired in Meriden and elsewhere, and never consolidated operations to achieve greater manufacturing efficiency. As discussed below, many of the Meriden plants operated in 19th-century loft buildings through most or all of their histories under International Silver. Although original company names at the factories were replaced by alphabetic designations, International Silver retained some of these names to market successful older silverware lines, as Meriden Britannia had done with Rogers Bros. wares. The basic technique for making plated flatware, described below for the last generation of production at International Silver Company Factory
H, remained unchanged for over a century but was refined by much larger plating tanks using greater electrical current, use of better chemicals and quality control to enhance the application of silverplate to German silver blanks, increased mechanization of steam- or electric-powered finishing processes, and improved ventilation systems (Sanborn Map Company 1901, 1950; Gibb 1943; May 1947; City of Meriden 1956; Harvard Business School 2011). The second round of International Silver acquisitions c1899-1905 included the 1903 purchase of C. Rogers & Bros., a firm established by brothers Cephas, Gilbert, and Wilbur Rogers in 1866. Younger relatives of the original silver-plating Rogers brothers, they had some experience with plated flatware through pre-1866 work with other firms, and initially made plated casket hardware before expanding into flatware production c1870 using designs based on those of the Roger Bros. 1847 line. They built a factory between Cook Avenue and Harbor Brook, north of Cooper Street, c1868-75. By 1901, C. Rogers & Bros. made cutlery and tinned iron spoons in addition to electroplated silverware. Their silverware lines, considered imitative of more prominent models, were not continued by International Silver. By c1920, the former C. Rogers & Bros. factory had been designated International Silver Company Factory. Following significant sales growth in the early 1920s, International Silver acquired three more Canadian factories in 1924 and additional American silverware businesses into the mid 1930s. To control its supply of flatware blanks, in 1924 the company established an electric-powered casting and rolling mill with expanded laboratory facilities to create plates of German silver, Brittania metal, and sterling silver at its Factory R in Meriden, a capability claimed as unique among American silverware manufacturers. Based on conversion to wartime production evidently planned by early 1939, the conglomerate became heavily involved in making military hardware during World War II, as discussed below for Factory H. International Silver incorporated in Connecticut in 1946, and expanded its manufacture of plated as well as sterling silver flatware to meet the demand created by a spike in marriages immediately after the war. Expanded operations included some new facilities at older plants such as Factory H, and construction of an entirely new flatware plant in southern Meriden. By 1948, the company was the largest silverware manufacturer in the world (Power 1939a, 1939b; Anonymous c1940-1945; May 1947; Insilco Club News April 1947; Green et al. 1955; City of Meriden 1956; Harvard Business School 2011). Despite International Silver’s prominent role in local industry for several generations, and the importance of senior company executives in other local financial and civic institutions, there is little compiled information on plant operations or employee relations. There was limited union activity in the Meriden and Wallingford plants. By the mid-1920s, International Silver was known informally as Insilco. In 1925, a voluntary social and athletic employee organization called the Insilco Club was established, which with some company support fielded plant-specific teams in several sports and organized many social events. The club’s self published monthly newsletters covered activities in all the American and Canadian plants (Insilco Club News c1925-1970; City of Meriden 1956; personal communications, Mary Ellen Mordarski, Allen L. Weathers). International Silver continued to construct some new local facilities in the 1950s and 1960s, but beginning in 1955 the company began to diversify in response to competition from Japanese makers of steel tableware. Until 1967, acquisitions of new firms and re-use of some older facilities continued to focus on metalworking products, and by 1965 non-silverware products accounted for half the company’s sales. Under chief executive officer Durand Blatz, the company subsequently moved into electronics and communications, automotive components, office products and specialty publishing, and renamed itself Insilco Corporation in 1969 with International Silver Company as an increasingly small subsidiary. Silverware manufacture continued to decline as a component of Insilco business, hobbled by low-priced tableware imports, inflated silver prices, and changing American lifestyles. Some departments in the silverware factories were moved to a new facility on Research Parkway in Meriden, and the tool-and-die making operations were converted to produce precision engine parts for airplanes and helicopters. The local silverware plants were gradually closed beginning in the early 1970s, with Factory H among the earliest to shut down c1972. After International Silver began to lose money in 1982, Insilco quickly sold the subsidiary, and by 1984 all silverware manufacture in Meriden ended (New York Times 1957; Harvard Business School 2011; Reference for Business 2011; personal communications, Mary Ellen Mordarski and Allen L. Weathers).