Images(3)

centerpiece

Object NameCut Glass Boat

Maker Compagnie des Verreries et Cristalleries de Baccarat

Made FromLead Glass

Date1900

Place MadeFrance, Baccarat

SizeOverall H: 167 cm, L: 160 cm

Accession Number79.3.155 B

Curatorial Area(s)

Modern

On ViewEuropean Gallery

Interpretive Notes

Web Text

Glass furniture became more popular and complex in the late 1800s. Factories competed to produce elaborate objects for display at world’s fairs. Baccarat first exhibited large glass furniture at the Paris exposition of 1878. Its spectacular display at that exposition was shown in a gallery called the Salon of the Thousand and One Nights. The products of this French company set the tone for design and execution of European glass for decades to come. The table was one of four made by the company in 1889. The cut glass boat was designed for Baccarat by the sculptor Charles Vital-Cornu (1851-1927) in 1900, and it was displayed with the table for the first time at the 1900 world’s fair in Paris.

Physical DescriptionColorless lead glass; blown, pressed, cut, assembled. Glass ship on waves, with ormolu mounts and figures; hull of ship formed as large, blown, cut ovoid form, open at top; sides elaborately cut, with band of intersecting arcs around top, creating series of rounded ovals with notched borders, diamonds between; faceted cross-cut band below; wide band of ovals bordered with cut stars below, bisected by rounded band; wide band of ovals bordered with cut stars below, bisected by rounded band; bottom covered with field of diamond facets; prow mounted with ormolu point and rippling sides, surmounted by hippocamp with lion's head, and figure of standing nude child fluttering drapery, holding one hand up, as if shading his eyes for better vision; stern mounted with ormolu structure of elaborate scrollwork, with molded top bar; oval openings at rear; flat, elaborately-cut rudder of rounded, roughly triangular shape mounted at rear, in ormolu frame; hull resting in molded and cut glass waves, with undulating, irregular tops and cut grooves on bottom; in rectangular ormolu frame, with rounded projections at sides; diamond-cut glass band on sides, below; fitted ormolu platform, with another nude child with billowing drapery, loosening an ormolu hawser from a mooring post mounted on one corner of upper ormolu frame; conforming, rounded base with cut glass panels of intersecting arcs, forming large, rounded, triangular bosses, outlined with notched bands, and with scrolls at corners; conforming, flat ormolu base with straight sides.
Provenance

Source Axel de Heeckeren - 1979-12-19

Source Claude Boisgirard - 1979-12-19

Former Collection Baccarat