Monumental Ludwig Vierthaler "Sea Form" Copper Vase

A monumentally sized hand-hammered and patinated copper “Sea Form” vase by Ludwig Vierthaler for Josef Winhart & Co., Kunstgewerbliche Werkstätten (Munich, Ger.), circa 1903. Dimensions: 15”(D) x 10”(H) x ~48”(C).

Examples of this large sized “Sea Form” vase are featured in: Jugendstil in München (1996). Wege in die Moderne. Katalog Staatliche Museen Kassel (pg. 76) and Die Jugend der Moderne: Art Nouveau und Jugendstil Meisterwerke aus Münchner Privatbesitz (2010). Villa Stuck: Arnoldsche Art Publishers (pg. 330). These other published examples, however, have a much more regularized “tendril” pattern and less pronounced surface application of the “sea flowers.” The example above is more organic in style than the other two examples and has far more irregular patination.

After many years as a silversmith and bronze caster with Tiffany & Co. in New York, Ludwig Vierthaler arrived in 1896 at the Royal College of Arts and Crafts in Munich. Shortly before 1900, he joined the metal workshop Josef Winhart & Co. in Munich, where he was the director of design. In 1906, he joined the services of Eugen Ehrenboeck, a competing Munich metal workshop and in the same year renamed, “E. & L Ehrenboeck Vierthaler.” In 1915, Vierthaler established a workshop and professorship at the College of Arts & Crafts in Hanover, Germany.