bowl

Born in Düsseldorf, Hans Stoltenberg Lerche was the son of the Norwegian painter Vincent Stoltenberg Lerche. Hans Stoltenberg Lerche worked in a small ceramics factory in Germany before traveling to Florence in 1886. He later moved to Paris, where he modeled small sculptures in various materials, including ceramics, gold, silver, bronze, and glass. He moved back to Italy— to Rome—in 1902, and he lived there until his death in 1920. In Rome, he continued to make ceramics, jewelry, and small bronze sculptures. From 1911 to 1920, Stoltenberg Lerche worked as a freelance designer for the Fratelli Toso glassworks on Murano. Founded in 1856, the glassworks produced mostly millefiori glasses in the early years of the 20th century. Stoltenberg Lerche’s designs, with their modern approach and strong Art Nouveau sensibility, represented a radical new direction for the glassworks. His irregularly shaped bowls with mottled tints were created using applications developed in France (and new to Murano), such as colored glass powders, granules, and metal compounds. Stoltenberg Lerche first traveled to Murano to learn glass-working himself. He meant “to acquire confidence and skill in the glassmaking art, yet after months and months of trying, eventually threw aside disconsolate the blow pipe, having decided that he would try no more” (Barovier Mentasti, p. 38; see below). After that, Stoltenberg Lerche relied on the maestro Vittorio Toso, then the design director of the glassworks, to execute his designs. This is one of a group of three vessels acquired by the Museum. The other two are a conical bowl with a dragonfly in the base and a shallow dish with abstract decoration. Signed “H. St. Lerche.” For more information, see Mario Que¬sada, Hans Stoltenberg Lerche (1865–1920): Sculture, disegni, vetri, ceramiche, Venice: Il Cardo, 1996; Marina Barovier, Rosa Barovier Mentasti, and Attilia Dorigato, Il vetro di Murano alle biennali, 1895–1972, Milan: Leonardo Arte, 1995, pp. 29 and 109–110; and Rosa Barovier Mentasti, Venetian Glass, 1890– 1990, Venice: Arsenale Editrice, 1992, p. 38.