Posted 5 years ago
jericho
(236 items)
This vase has a bright lemon base color with cobalt powders to make variations of green. It appears crystal rods were used for the lines.
Welz used several Techniques to create lines in the glass
Welz - line decor | ||
Art Glass4513 of 23408 |
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Posted 5 years ago
jericho
(236 items)
This vase has a bright lemon base color with cobalt powders to make variations of green. It appears crystal rods were used for the lines.
Welz used several Techniques to create lines in the glass
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Great find. This is a reasonably uncommon color combination for this decor.
Yes, I agree so I jumped on it because -I have only seen small ones if this decor.
An overall observation: The basic names we give these decor combinations (lines, confetti, spatter, honeycomb) imply that they are related or done in the same process - I think this false, they may not be related in any other way than visually; This is still a mystery to me. Sometimes a Honeycombe pattern is done with confetti, sometimes with powders... sometimes lines seem to be created with a glass rod placed into them, sometimes a line was embossed into the decor.... sometimes decors create air bubbles in them (as part of the decor or just the process?) sometimes they don’t. This is one of the things I love about Welz - Their decors are visually simple but tested the glass making skills of the artists. I imagine that when “lines were called for in a series they had four or five ways to execute those lines within that decor.
Observation two: why were they so prolific in making such brightly colored 5”,7” and 9” vases and made so few 11”, 12” and even 14” vases? This is anyone’s guess. I have a friend who only collects small Czech glass, Welz is a perfect producer for those that want to pack a lot of color and design in a small place!
Lovely colours and very crisply defined stripes. Well done you!
I suspect the plethora of average sized vases and the relative scarcity of large sizes is down to the curve of natural distribution of incomes. Simply put there were/are more people with an average income and fewer people with a high income to buy the large vases.
Sklo, I wish I could say the larger the vase the better the decor but this is rarely the case. I forgot to mention this vase is just under 9” tall - that is average for Czech but tall for this decor
I also wonder if anyone else used those clear glass stems around the interior of the glass pieces. Plus how was it done? After the base was made, then covered with more glass layers? The few pieces I have are very interesting.
I think about this a lot, here ate two possible techniques:
Rod method
1. Gather opaque base color on punty, blow into ball then roll
2 Roll into powders maybe on a table, reheat
3 Lay out crystal clear rods evenly on table, roll glass over them fusing them to the surface of the glass, reheat
4 Bow out glass and roll over crystal clear ground glass, reheat.
5 Spin into wooden shaping mold, reheat and move to cooling kiln
Or
Metal mold method
1 Gather base color and blow out
2 Roll over powders to cover and reheat, roll cylinder shape
3 Emboss glass with metal mold to create line indentations, blow out to expand lines
4 Roll over crystal clear casing glass, blow out and reheat
5 Roll into shape and reheat, move to cooling ovens
What do you think? Any other theories?
I asked one of the old Anerican collectors on Facebook, he said they were used in a mold, where they would be placed first then covered with a blown in layer of glass, the cooled, then the rest of the glass applications would be done, reheated and cooled again.
I always wonder why, it is an interesting fabrication,very specific and different, but a lot of trouble. Thanks Jericho.
Straight rods of clear glass would be pretty impossible to place in a mold that has curved sides. They would also be very difficult to attached to the sides of a partially blown vessel that did not have straight sides.
I think that the powders and rods were laid out on a marver, and a partially blown cylinder, like the shape of a "pipe" of glass with one end closed, would have been rolled on the table to pick up the rods and powders. The cylinder form would likely have been created using wood paddles as seen used in today's studio glass videos. That partial gather with rods and powder applied to it, would have had an exterior casing of clear (in most cases) gathered on the surface of the partially blown gather, and then reheated and blown into a mold.
The surface of these vessels are generally smooth cased class, indicating that the interior of the mold was smooth when the item was blown into it. Also, you can see the same shape with variations in the number of rods that covered the exterior, indicating they were most likely laid out on a table for each production piece.
Rods onto hot glass cylinders seems the most plausible to me. Rods placed into molds - not possible.