vase

“Twenty-Seven Contemporary Artists” was a series of engraved vases and bowls made by Steuben Glass in 1939. It was exhibited for the first time in the company’s New York City showroom in January 1940. Inspired by a conversation with the French painter Henri Matisse (1860–1954), Steuben’s design director, John Monteith Gates (American, 1905–1979), began in 1937 to enlist 27 well-known European and American artists to create designs for glass. They included Thomas Hart Benton, Salvador Dalí, Henri Matisse, Isamu Noguchi, Georgia O’Keeffe, and the French painter Fernand Léger. In Léger's engraved image, a building is shown from more than one angle, which is typical of Cubist constructions. Large plants appear on the right, and a plant or an abstract figure is outlined in an opening that may be a window or doorway, giving the impression of a house with people inside. Léger’s design drawing for the vase is one of 21 original drawings for the series that are owned by The Corning Museum of Glass, the gift in 2000 of Corning Incorporated. Steuben Glass proposed a limited edition of six of each design, five to be sold and one to be kept by the glassworks. However, a full edition of all of the designs was not completed, Steuben did not keep a set, and the company did not document how many were produced, so the exact number of each design made is unknown. The Museum owns 10 designs from this important series—nine finished pieces and one engraving study for a vase—and hopes to acquire examples of all of the designs produced. Signed: “F. LÉGER LEGER,” engraved at the right below the decoration, and “Steuben,” engraved in script on the base. Published: Madigan (29), p. 250; and Designs in Glass by Twenty-Seven Contemporary Artists, Corning: Steuben Glass Inc., 1940, p. 18.