Large Antique Heisey Crystal Basket Vase with Etched Butterflies and Flowers

This is a clear crystal cylindrical shaped vase. It is decorated with multiple flowers etched in the center of it. Under the base is an acid etche...

Before describing the object under consideration, we must make an important clarification; the artifact, one of many that we will publish over time, is part of the museum collection of a historic Florentine crystal grinder that unfortunately closed recently. It is the Marcello Galgani & Sons company, whose completely manual and artisanal work has not withstood the disproportionate advance of mass-produced mechanical processes! Marcello Galgani began his craft as a grinder and restorer in 1960; as the years went by, Marcello mastered and became familiar with particular techniques and shapes, resulting in the production of objects that manage to retain the freshness of grinding and engraving, the warmth and softness of light, and the inimitable flavor of unique artifacts. After several years, his son Lorenzo, who grew up among crystals, also entered the business and immediately became passionate about this ancient craft with skill and ability. Stimulated by the aesthetic sense of the past, father and son, set up a workshop in which the shapes they researched and created themselves are mouth-blown by traditional Tuscan glassmakers in Empoli, then ground and engraved using ancient sixteenth-century techniques, with motifs born from the Galgani's inexhaustible imagination or culturally inspired by designs of objects seen and studied in Florentine museums (Uffizi, Galleria Palatina, Museo degli Argenti, etc.). Marcello and Lorenzo Galgani were also Masters in the difficult art of restoration, bringing rare and precious objects back to life. As mentioned the company recently closed and disposed of all its last production, and only Marcello's old private museum collection remained, which includes unique and special objects created over time, a collection that the craftsman made available to us for a planned sale. All of the objects were made entirely by hand with old grinding wheels, but there were mainly two tools that allowed the creation of masterpieces: the right hand and the left hand of the master craftsman. Ancient glassmaking techniques were used for all the ground and engraved products: first, the object was ground with an emery wheel fed continuously by a jet of abrasive sand and water, then re-polished with a very fine-grained sandstone wheel also fed with water; the engravings were done freehand using as many as 10-15 small stone wheels for each design (flowers, branches, animals, etc. ); then the object was polished and shined; we must make, at this point, an important clarification on these last two operations: towards the end of the 1960s acid crystal polishing was devised, the object was immersed and rotated in a solution of sulfuric acid, fluoridic acid and water and in a short time all the defects left by the previous processes were eliminated, it was a fast, industrial operation that allowed to lower costs considerably, with discrete but not excellent results. But for Galgani's products polishing is done with a cork bark wheel wet with water and pumice, to make the surfaces more transparent, and finally polishing was achieved with a felt wheel wet with a paste of water, iron oxide, and cerium oxide. This series of processes takes an average of two days of work( sometimes much longer) for each object, each engraving or grinding is the result of the creative inventiveness of the two artisans, inventiveness that transforms crystal into reality material of the highest aesthetic value and inestimable value. All the items in the entire collection have never been used; they were part of the exhibition. Large crystal vase with a black base; the decorations, purely Art Noveau, represent graceful butterflies and dragonflies in a peaceful lake landscape. The object is "one-of-a-kind" signed by the Master; it was created in Marcello Galgani's workshop in 1982 and made with the techniques (grinding, engraving, and polishing) we explained in the description; for the shape, the Master was inspired by a vase found in a painting, preserved in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence by the 16th-century painter Jacopo Ligozzi...

Ipsens, Denmark, vase with flowers and butterfly. Glaze in orange and green tones. 1920s-1930s. Model number 473. Marked. In perfect conditio...

1920s Cloisonné Vase with Flowers and Butterflies

Antique Bing & Grøndahl porcelain vase with hand-painted butterflies and flowers. Handles modelled as snakes from Medusa's hair. 1870s. Measures: 24 x 15.5 cm. In excellent origi...

A simple and modern Crystal vase with varying degrees of etched circles towards the base. While this is a piece, likely from the mid 20th Century, the style lends itself to a clean a...

Pair of vases made of polychrome porcelain depicting hand-decorated flowers and butterflies, complete with base of carved wood. Japanese manufacture, early 1900s, signed on the base....

This vase is made out of heavy Crystal. It designed in a spherical shape and has etched designs . It makes for a great centerpiece or side table decoration.

1920s Small Cloisonné Vase with Flowers and Butterflies Turquoise, Blues, Greens, Reds, Pink Small knick inside edge of lip (as shown in p...

Large French Art Nouveau vase by DAUM (Nancy), France, 1910-1915. Rosehip flowers. Large double-blown glass vase in the shape of a baluster shouldered with an open neck, decorated wi...