Early 20th Century Vases

Antique colorful Steuben blown glass pieces featuring the "Moss Agate" technique designed by its co-founding artistic director Frederick Carder are unsigned and "all rare" according ...

This antique ArtDeco-period Steuben mostly purple glass vase designed by its co-founder Frederick Carder is a colorless-crystal-cased "Transparent Amethyst Bubbly" type with colorless crystal decoration including a rare cut lip-wrap with thick undulating application that adds up to a 3.5-inch-diameter flat rim, along with a smooth casing over a rare see-through twisted linear air-trap pattern with a wider 4-inch hip near the footless bottom. Weighing 625 grams, the short heavy vase is a hybrid matching Steuben shape-numbers 7273 with its variety of colorless cut-crystal lip-wrap decoration and 7036 with its colorless cut-crystal casing. These like forms were produced in multiple colors/shading and patterns with or without a foot and/or decoration in a wide variety of hybrid techniques that are characteristic of the designs by Carder. The 7000 series was among the last produced by Carder before his 30 years as artistic director since 1903 came to an end based on the board decision of Steuben parent-company Corning Glass Works to abandon color by 1933 and move forward using only progressive optical glass with colorless brilliance. The Carder Steuben Glass Association has published for its online shape-index a handful of approximately 10-inch-tall 7273/7036 versions, along with similar shorter shapes like the 8.25-inch 7083 vase and 7 5/8-inch 7206 "Bubbly" vase, along with the much earlier 1153 salt-and-pepper shakers of about half that size but of unlimited dimensions in a vague line drawing. A photo of one 1153-variation shows them with perforated metal caps at 3.5-inches tall in "Transparent Amethyst" like our vase, but with optic ribs instead of air-trapping. Despite the early line drawing, it is most likely that our vase was made in the late 1920s to early 1930s when Carder designed air-trap pieces with coarser glass particles and heavier crystal casing and applications. In the 1974-published book featuring only museum-quality glass works, Steuben: Seventy Years of American Glass Making, its pages 42-43 highlight a similar unmarked photographed Cluthra vase...