Tirol Glas Lötz "Perloptik" Bowl, Rolf Eugen Rehfeld design, with original label, ca. 1950

This is presumably from the last group of pieces to bear a label with the Loetz name. To be clear, though, this is not a Loetz bowl, but it does have a lineage that goes back to the original Loetz factory in Klostermühle. After a major fire in 1930, and final bankruptcy in 1939, the Loetz company was organized under Kristallglasfabrik Spiegelau GmBH, until 1942, when the company and its assets were acquired by Julius Altmann-Althausen, whose son Kurt married the eldest daughter of Friedrich von Spaun, Maria Luisa. This company, Glasfabrik Klostermühle vorm. J. Lötz We, Inh. Julius Altmann-Althausen, was liquidated in 1947. However, Altmann-Althausen established a new glass works in Kufstein in the state of Tyrol in Austria in 1948 called "Tiroler Glashütte Altmann-Althausen, Johann Lötz Enkel KG. It was this glass works that produced the bowl shown here. This version of the company was in business for only 6 years, so this piece dates to between 1948 and 1954. The paper label reads "Tirol Glas Lötz 1830", and has a faux coat-of-arms that incorporates the ram from the Spaun family coat-of-arms bottom right, and the Tiroler eagle upper left. Though there is a familial and legal connection to the old Loetz factory, the factory itself, the work force, and certainly the artistic vision were not the same. Nonetheless, this piece represents a fascinating, if not tragic, time in the history of the company and of that region in the years following World War II.