Lot Essay
With its ruby red flaring rim, this looped glass vase is a rare interpretation of a well-documented American glass form. Although based on colorfully looped English Nailsea glasswares, the flaring neck, globular base and squat baluster knop of the example illustrated here are typical attributes of American glass made in the Pittsburgh-Wheeling-Zanesville area in the late 1840s. Similar multiply overlaid hollow forms of clear glass with stretched opaque threads in varying colors were also made in several South Jersey glasshouses.
Several related examples are in musuem collections or are published in glass studies. Lowell Inness illustrates and discusses two related Pittsburgh area glass forms including a looped vase with applied opal rim and a looped vase with opaque ruffled rim (see Inness, Pittsburgh Glass, 1791-1891: A History and Guide for Collectors (Boston: 1976), p. 104 and p.103). A glass vase with white opaque looped decoration in the collection of the Winterthur Museum is illustrated in Arlene Palmer, Glass in Early America (Winterthur, DE: 1993), p. 287, cat. 263, accession number 67.857. Similar South Jersey forms made circa 1849 include a vase with red-amber rim and wafered knop in the collection of the Toledo Museum of Art and published in Kenneth M. Wilson, American Glass: 1760-1930(New York: 1994) pp. 87, 197, fig. 140, cat. 139: accession number 1948.49. A related South Jersey vase with graduated wafers flanking a suppressed ball knop made circa 1855 is in the George Horace Lorimer Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and is illustrated and discussed in Adeline Pepper, The Glass Gaffers of New Jersey(New York: 1971), p. 272.
Several related examples are in musuem collections or are published in glass studies. Lowell Inness illustrates and discusses two related Pittsburgh area glass forms including a looped vase with applied opal rim and a looped vase with opaque ruffled rim (see Inness, Pittsburgh Glass, 1791-1891: A History and Guide for Collectors (Boston: 1976), p. 104 and p.103). A glass vase with white opaque looped decoration in the collection of the Winterthur Museum is illustrated in Arlene Palmer, Glass in Early America (Winterthur, DE: 1993), p. 287, cat. 263, accession number 67.857. Similar South Jersey forms made circa 1849 include a vase with red-amber rim and wafered knop in the collection of the Toledo Museum of Art and published in Kenneth M. Wilson, American Glass: 1760-1930(New York: 1994) pp. 87, 197, fig. 140, cat. 139: accession number 1948.49. A related South Jersey vase with graduated wafers flanking a suppressed ball knop made circa 1855 is in the George Horace Lorimer Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and is illustrated and discussed in Adeline Pepper, The Glass Gaffers of New Jersey(New York: 1971), p. 272.