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Bimini Animal Martini Cocktail Glasses- Set of Four
About the Item
Bimini Animal Martini Cocktail Glasses with Animals- Set of Four,
Circa 1925-35
The Bimini footed cocktail glasses have two central "bubbles". The lower one is of a teardrop shape and is hollow with the outside studded (prunts) like 17th-century glass to help hold it. Above is a globe-shaped bubble with a different animal within. The top is a conical-shaped martini glass with orange and white swirls. The animals include a bird, a dog, and two foxes.
Dimensions: 7 1/4 inches high x 3 1/8 inches wide
BIMINI
The Glass Museum
Raymond Berger is the son of Joseph Berger and nephew of Fritz Lampl, founders of Bimini Glass
Bimini and Orplid were linked by one man, a poet, artist, and dreamer, a man of ideas but with a streak of practicality, enough to run successive businesses for over thirty years. That man was Fritz Lampl, an Austrian, born in Vienna in 1892 and brought up in a suburb of that city where there was a large Jewish population. His father was a corn merchant and he had two elder brothers, August an architect, and Paul a banker.
Fritz became a poet, with poems published in the leading literary review The Brenner and short stories published by a German publisher called Jakob Hegner. Fritz was 22 when war broke out in Europe in 1914, with Germany and Austria fighting against Britain, France and their allies. His brother August was killed in one of the first battles of that war, and his other brother Paul, an officer in the army, was also killed. The rules of war in Austria at that time exempted from military service other sons of any family which lost two sons; so Fritz continued with his writing career.
During the war Fritz and his writer and artist friends used to meet in the Cafe Herrenhof, which had replaced the Zentral as the meeting place of interllectuals. It was here that he met Hilde Berger, sister of two architect/designers, Joseph and Artur Berger; and when the war ended he married Hilde.
After the war a group of writers, led by Fritz Lampl and Albert Ehrenstein, formed a writers' cooperative and published a small number of slim volumes, including Fritz's comedy The Flight. This publishing venture failed to make any profit and Fritz did not even receive his salary.
Shortly afterwards Fritz visited an exhibition in Berlin which included fantasy shapes in blown glass by Marianne von Allesch. He described these as "poetry materialised" and decided that he too would make "frozen poetry" in glass.
Bimini
In 1923 Fritz Lampl rented a basement, employed an out-of-work industrial glassblower, and invited his brother-in-law, Joseph Berger, to design fantasy shapes and sit beside the glassblower working together to convert the designs into glass. They worked with glass tubes of different diameters and colors, some of them striped. Joseph Berger described their work as follows:
First a mouthpiece was formed and then the man suddenly turned up the burner until the glass grew red hot and pliable, expanding as he blew into it, twisting, reheating, and finally cutting the bubble with a knife to form a foot; a vase had been born. There was great virtuosity in handling such brittle material, like taming an obstinate animal. It had to be married to sensitivity to turn craft into art.
We learned quickly from each other and soon fantastic animals, vases and figures emerged, which the glass blower then multiplied on his own. Fritz soon took my place as the designer and other artists were attracted by the fascinating game.
The name Lampl chose for his company, Bimini, is from a poem by Heinrich Heine about a fictional island called Bimini. Here is an extract:
Little Birdie Colibri,
Lead us on to Bimini
Fly ahead and we shall follow
In beflagged barges hollow;
On the Isle of Bimini
Reigns eternal ecstasy
And the golden larks are singing
In the Blue their tirili
by Heinrich Heine.
A flowerpot logo was decided upon, registered, craftsmen engaged, and a workshop set up. The date was November 1923. Very soon afterwards magazines were showing illustrations of Bimini glass and stores were buying them.
Labels with the logo were stuck to the various objects the workshop produced. Unfortunately they have mostly dropped off making identification of genuine Bimini items difficult. There have been many imitators ofBimini both Pre and Post World War II. Bimini has come to be used among some people as a generic term for any lamp blown glass from Continental Europe prior to World War II.
Output from the workshop was varied and extensive. The Bimini glass figurines are so beautiful they are like frozen moments in glass, or as they were described by Lampl "frozen poetry".
Many Bimini figurines use only one colour, and only rarely more than two. There is a correctness in anatomy and posture; they are abstract and lack detailed features. But always they convey a feeling, an emotion, and movement.
Coloured glass animals were also popular, as were the many designs of glasses, vases, and even glass cacti in ceramic flowerpots!
Joseph and Artur Berger were active in the firm both as designers of actual glass objects, which were then realised by the craftsmen, and also as designers of the Bimini showrooms, display cabinets and even notepaper.
Joseph Berger, who wrote an account of Bimini and Orplid shortly before his death in 1989, maintained that he and his brother acted as a restraint to some of the more kitsch and sentimental aspects of the glass. Joseph was a student of the famous Modernist architect Adolf Loos.
Fritz Lampl continued to write poetry during this period in Vienna, and the reception room of the home the Lampls shared with Hilde's sister, became a literary salon in the evening after work. Amongst the many visitors who came for advice, inspiration, or conversation, was H.M.Hauer (inventor of 12 tone music), Paul Engelmann, and his friend Wittgenstein.
Distinguishing features of Bimini, on the whole, were the delicacy of the lamp blown glass and the elegant design. Many of the items featured swirling patterns, either in white or coloured glass, somewhat in the Venetian latticino style.
The success of the firm was considerable, gaining a number of prizes at a Paris exhibition of 1925 and exhibiting throughout Europe and the USA. In Vienna the Bimini showrooms were set up in Stubenring, a fashionable address near the Museum of Arts and Crafts. Their glass became collectors items and they were very popular.
But Bimini was to be overtaken by world events, and the rise of Nazism in Austria meant that it was no longer safe for Jewish people to live and work there. Joseph Berger emigrated to England in 1936, and Artur Berger moved to Russia where he was to spend the rest of his life, working as an Art Director for Mosfilms. Fritz Lampl stayed in Vienna until 1938, when he joined the queue of alarmed Jews who hoped to emigrate to England. The British interviewers were encouraging craftsmen to emigrate to Britain, they were not accepting many merchants. Fritz took some samples of Bimini glasses and photos of his wife's model dresses to the interview, and successfully gained a visa for himself and his wife.
Secret Nazi organisations had penetrated Viennese society by this time, and people in Vienna stopped trusting one another. Fritz and Hilde made their preparations to leave in secrecy, and took with them only a few examples of his work. They left so secretly, in fact, that his assistant did not know he was leaving, and arrived for work at the Bimini shop to find that her boss had fled. She was later to donate many examples of Bimini glass to the Applied Arts Museum in Vienna.
(Ref: NY9757-prr)
- Creator:Bimini Glass (Designer)
- Dimensions:Height: 7.25 in (18.42 cm)Diameter: 3.13 in (7.96 cm)
- Sold As:Set of 4
- Style:Art Deco (Of the Period)
- Materials and Techniques:
- Place of Origin:
- Period:
- Date of Manufacture:19203-30s
- Condition:
- Seller Location:Downingtown, PA
- Reference Number:Seller: NY9757-prrx1stDibs: LU861044897592
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