WMF: Large Ikora Unika glass bowl. Prod. No. 216.

The Ikora-Unika glasses, named after a tropical plant called "Ixora" (because of its many different colored flowers), were produced in the glassworks of the Würtembergische Metallwarenfabrik in Geislingen, called WMF, from 1926 to 1954. In my opinion, these glasses are completely undervalued compared to other European glasses of this time, for example from Murano or Scandinavia. The first object of this kind was created in an attempt by Carl Wiedmann, who had covered a damaged Myra crystal glass with colorless glass. The iris layer of the Myra glass had partially dissolved, causing these well-known inclusions, flakes and bubbles (quote: Carlo Burschel, WMF, Ikora & Myra). There were around 5000 glass recipes in the glassworks, including glasses with enclosed silver and copper foils, aventurine and mica. In this short text it is completely impossible to go into the countless special fields and the technical achievements of this important glass manufacturer. The WMF company has also produced a large number of Ikora glass lamps with a metal mount in their serial art glass. Since it was primarily a metalworking company, this was not a problem because everything could be produced and put together in the same place. Most of the Unika glasses are freely formed, which is what gives this work its special charm. Most of the late Ikora glasses after 1948 are mass-produced and come from the industrial line. These have nothing to do with the original Unika series, they were only made in 6 color variants. The production of Ikora glasses, like the Myra products, was discontinued in 1954. The metal processing part of the WMF company still exists today and operates worldwide.
The large bowl shown here has the production number 216, it is 27 cm high and 29 cm wide. The price of this bowl shows that the Unika series is a luxury product. This originally cost over 70 Reichsmarks, for comparison: a worker received a monthly wage of around 160 Reichsmarks.
The other pictures give a small overview of the production of Ikora glass by WMF.