R. Louis Bofferding Decorative and Fine Art Serveware, Ceramics, Silver Glass

This ravishing Art Nouveau silver plated centrepiece is decorated with butterflies, flowers, and budding tendrils, and retains the original applied patina and cobalt-blue-glass liner...

In the 1920s Gio Ponti, who defined 20th century Italian design, was the art director of Richard-Ginori, a venerable porcelain company established in the 18th century. When Ponti moved on in 1930, his protégé Giovanni Gariboldi, who also designed furniture and interiors, filled the vacated position. It would seem that Gariboldi found his model for these shell-shaped dishes in nature, but this is not the case. Rather, he channeled the essence of “shellness," and endowed his design with the faux verisimilitude of delicate ribbing along the scalloped edge. Yet he had them glazed in improbable candy-like pastel colors of pink, yellow, and blue. Originally used principally as ashtrays, no doubt, they could also be put to use as serving dishes for nuts and candies, or as decorative tabletop objects...

A set of three spiraling clear-glass obelisks with red flame-like intrusions by Venini. All bearing faint acid-etched stamps that date them to the 1950s. They are 17, 14 1/4, and 14...

This tall, slender, blanc de chine porcelain vase was made around 1910 in Berlin by KPM, and was probably designed by Alexander Kips. Blending elements of the Art Nouveau and Rococo ...

This glamorous set of 17 dinner and 12 side plates were made of gold-glass, rather than the usual gilded porcelain. They belonged to Jan Cowles, the wife of Gardner Cowles, the newsp...