plate

For ages, Europeans felt drawn by the secrets and mysteries of the Orient. In the field of glassmaking, Islamic art was highly influential from the Middle Ages on. This interest found a revival in the second half of the 19th century. The Imperial Glass Factory of St. Petersburg, Russia, was probably the first with an exhibition of Oriental-style glassware at the World's Fair in Paris 1867. In 1873, the Russian factory was joined by J. & L. Lobmeyr from Vienna and Philippe-Joseph Brocard from Paris in displaying Oriental enameled glass at the World's Fair in Vienna, and Ludwig Lobmeyr accredited Brocard with having contributed "the most beautiful of this kind in the exhibition." The Museum's plate belongs to this group, but is distinguished by mimicking an original Islamic glass plate to the minute detail. This plate had been bequeathed in 1891 to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (no. 91.1.1533). The glass enameler Philippe-Joseph Brocard (d. 1896) excelled in artful designs influenced by Islamic glass. However, his contemporaries noted that his imitations of Islamic glasses were so thorough that they easily could be confused with the original.