jardinière

This jardiniere is made of opaque white glass with wavy brown lines in imitation of veined marble. Although no quarried marble could have been carved so thinly into a stable and functional vessel, the ongoing fashion for bronze-mounted semiprecious stones inspired the glasshouse of Johann Loetz Witwe (1836–1947) to create this piece. Decorative glass and floral mounts were used in residential interiors and were created for a rising middle class that desired to emulate the grand style of 18th-century aristocratic homes. Nineteenth-century Bohemian glasshouses became world famous for perfecting 17th- and 18th-century techniques and for adopting stylistic influences and decorative qualities known from foreign glassware, as well as from porcelain and hard-stone objects. This large jardiniere beautifully exemplifies the opulent taste, luxurious materials, and imitative qualities of the Belle Epoque period. The glasshouse of Loetz Witwe was at its most inventive around the turn of the 20th century. It absorbed such international fashions as decoration with sumptuous gilt bronze mounts, which had persisted since the revival of the 18th-century Rococo style, and it pioneered forms that contributed to the new Art Nouveau style.