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enamelled glass

decorative arts

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major reference

  • fish of core-made glass
    In glassware: The Roman Empire

    …specialties attributed to Alexandria were enamel painting (pigments mixed with a glassy flux were fused to the surface of the glass vessel by a separate firing) and an extraordinary technique of sandwiching a gold leaf etched with a design between two layers of clear glass.

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  • fish of core-made glass
    In glassware: England

    Enamelling, the second decorative technique of foreign inspiration, began to be used on English glass in the mid-18th century. It embellished opaque white glass in imitation of china—a type of work usually associated with the name of Michael Edkins, a Bristol artist, but in fact…

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Humpen glass

  • Reichsadlerhumpen, enameled glass Humpen with a double-headed eagle wearing the imperial German crown, 1604; in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
    In Humpen glass

    …pearls of various colours—and the enamel decoration. Humpen can be divided into three types. Reichsadlerhumpen carry a double-headed eagle and imperial German crown. The bird’s breast is usually covered with either a large crucifix or a ball of empire; the arms of the German electors and the 48 members of…

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Mary Gregory glass

  • Mary Gregory glass
    In Mary Gregory glass

    …glass was decorated with white enamel designs that were painted on the surface instead of being carved, as the genuine cameo glass was. Such cheap copying of the real cameo glass eventually ruined the market for both the genuine and the copies alike, since the greatest part of the English…

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Key People:
Louis Comfort Tiffany
Related Topics:
glassware

lustred glass, art glass in the Art Nouveau style. It is a delicately iridescent glass with rich colours. Lustred glass was first produced in the United States by Louis Comfort Tiffany during the late 1800s for use as windowpanes. The intention of the inventor of Tiffany lustred glass, Arthur J. Nash, was to recreate artificially the natural iridescent sheen produced by the corrosion of ancient buried glassware, such as that unearthed near Roman ruins. In 1893 Tiffany founded the Stourbridge Glass Company in Long Island, N.Y., to produce decorative lustred glassware, including drinking glasses, bowls, vases, lamps, and jewelry. Because of the tremendous popularity of this glassware, known by the trade name Favrile glass, the Stourbridge firm and other Tiffany companies continued to make thousands of lustred glass articles annually until 1933.

Although Tiffany lustred glass was inspired by the metallized glassware produced in the 1870s in Paris and Vienna, it differed from the European variety in that it had a pearl-like sheen rather than a mirrorlike finish. This variation resulted largely from differences in the type and colour of the glass to which the metallic lustre pigments were applied. On transparent glass, such as was used in Europe, the effect is a brilliant iridescence, but on opaque glass, which Tiffany employed, the effect is a soft, satiny sheen. Lustre applied to glass that is both transparent and yellow in colour produces gold, while transparent cobalt-blue glass sandwiched between two layers of transparent yellow glass turns to a deep and iridescent blue when lustred.

Among Tiffany’s more intricately and lavishly lustred wares is a textured variety. The textured surface was created by rolling glass, while still hot, over multicoloured crushed glass and by inducing and breaking bubbles on its surface. In another elaborate form of lustred ware, the opaque glass body is decorated with threads or patches of both transparent and coloured glass that produce contrasting effects of brilliance and subdued sheen when coated with a metallic compound.

See also Art Nouveau.