Posted 4 years ago
Christophe…
(26 items)
I picked up this clear 7.25” tall neodymium crystal Moser vase designed by Joseph Hoffmann at a consignment store just as the COVID-19 restrictions lifted. It was never sold in three months it was posted and the price dropped plus they gave me a 10% discount for using my store credit and I wound up paying $9.81 total, and that’s with tax included. The vase is worth 15-20 times that, but I’m not parting with it. It is currently sitting on a bookshelf with some of the other objet d’art I’ve been collecting over the years.
These are great vases, but the link to Hoffman is a wive's tale that has never been shown to be true.
Also, the vase is either lead crystal or simply clear class, but it is not Neodymium glass. Neodymium glass is glass which shows as pink under sunlight and a normal light spectrum, and shows as blue under a fluorescent light spectrum. Neodymium glass is also known as Alexandrite glass.
Either way, it is a great vase, and was a great buy at that price.
Welzebub, please explain more about the link to Hoffmann being a wive's tale! I am very interested to know more. Can you tell me who designed or produced it then? I put the vase in sunlight, but I see no color change. I have two others that are smoky topaz. All are heavy, so they could very well be lead, but I honestly thought they were neodymium after doing research on the internet. Are there resources you could direct me to in order to educate myself better about discerning these vases?
I do not know that the designer of the vases has ever been determined. I simply know that there is not solid link to Hoffman as the designer. We own an example in the same glass as yours that stands at about 12".
The second image in this article shows Neodymium glass in the two colors as seen with different light sources. Alexandrite glass is a common name used. Tiffin referred to their line of Neodymium glass as "Twilight".
https://www.beachcombingmagazine.com/blogs/news/neodymium-sea-glass
Thank you for the insight, Welzebub! Your comments also call into question of when my vases may have been manufactured and by whom. Nonetheless, I still adore my vases no matter when or where they were made, and I am lucky I got them all at such fantastic prices. My favorite consignment store is priced to move stuff out quickly, and sometimes I think they just don't realize how much some things are actually worth.
Glad to help. We bought ours at a garage sale for $5 about 20 years ago, and even then I would have paid 10 or 15 times that for it. Half the fun of collecting is the hunt and the finds...
Time frame wise I believe these are generally 1920's, 1930's production. They are very well executed pieces of glass that required master cutters to produce them.