Vases Loaded

Very quickly I wanted to link to a nice blog post written about my Art & Architecture Tour of Lincoln Center. I can't really pat myself on the back over it: Sims works for LC. He can't very well say anything too negative about the tour. Of course my tour is awesome, so I'm sure it wasn't difficult to find good things to say about it. Anyway, it was interesting to see what he remembered most.


That's not what I wanted to talk about, though. I wanted to show some things from Moser Glass that I spotted at the ICFF. Ludwig Moser founded the company in 1857, and they hail from Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic, which is sort of smack in the middle of the triangle formed by Prague, Dresden, and Richard Wagner's headquarters, Bayreuth.

Unfortunately I need to say that this was the website I found quite a bit less than inspiring, although perfectly nice to look at. For my purposes, I found it very awkward to get around. Every movement I made seemed to require a reload of a web page and constant backpedaling. The photos of their products are so small that they're hardly worth browsing. To be fair, this extremely high-quality cut glass is certainly better seen in person, anyway, where one can fully appreciate its weight, clarity, and the way it catches light. Their contact person was also very nice, very helpful, and quicker to respond than most. Having experienced the whole range of possible responses to email queries, I can sincerely say I place a lot of value on that.

Having been around for well over a century, they not unexpectedly have some very nice traditional work that's been treasured by royalty and heads-of-state all over Europe. In fact, they're quite proud of their clients and list on their website the kings and princesses who have owned the various collections over the years.

While I liked tracing their evolution into the modern age, from about the 1910s to the late-1920s, it was in 1934 that I noticed something that really grabbed me. It's a collection called simply "Bar" from 1934, designed by Rudolf Eschler:


The four wide facets of the base and the gentle curve of the vessel make this so serene and sophisticated. More than that, although it's seventy-five years old, I think no one would be at all shocked to see this in a store today. There's something wonderfully timeless about the design.

Leaping quite a bit forward to 1998, here's a vase called "Ikebana," designed by Lukáš Jabůrek, who I believe is their most promising designer:

[On a side note, I'm about the least linguistically xenophobic person you'll ever meet, but I have no idea how the Czechs can get anything typed at all, with all those diaereses, circumflexes, carons, and tildes over every other letter.] This is also offered in a version with vertical facets that curve up from the bottom to the top. There's something beautifully chemistry laboratory about it. Things like this always strike me as being somehow naturalistic in a very subtle, even subconscious sort of way. But it's also taking great advantage of the medium of cut glass. It uses the materials to create an intense optical experience and manipulate the quality of light hitting it.

Two years later they unveiled "Gema" by Kateřina Doušová:

This is equally fascinating for the way it exploits the qualities of the glass, but adds color to the mix. The various different color combinations are also dramatic and very well chosen: icy blues, deep rich purples, firey yellows. Each of them is gorgeous in its own way, while being very different in character at the same time.

In 2002 they did something a bit more fun and clever. This is "Tipsy" by Jiří Rydlo:


I had seen these before, not at a trade show, but in some design store somewhere. At the time, I didn't take much of a closer look to note that they were by Moser. The more your guests drink, the more likely I can imagine that you're going to have liquor all over the table, but I still adore this concept. They're perfectly counterbalanced with the weight of a heavy glass base, of course, but can rock back and forth. Even just visually, they're uncommon and interesting. I would also think that the movement of them, as a group of people pick up their glasses and set them back down, would be delightfully festive. They're also available in a clear version, but I think the lens at the bottom of a matte glass would help emphasize its movement even better.

Getting back to Lukáš Jabůrek, most of the newer items Moser has out that impressed me were his designs. The rest of these are all his and all from 2009. First, the vases, here's "Balada":

This was where I started to see Moser as an adept competitor in the present design market, in addition to doing high-quality work. This is a great piece. It's a very simple relationship, but so well done. At the top, it's vertical, rigorous, formal, geometric, and restrained. The horizontal pattern at the bottom is in sharp contrast free, loose, casual, and almost organic.

The next three make up Jabůrek's "Comfort" collection, lens cut:

Very nice, although this one could probably have appeared just as easily in the 1950s or '60s.

Spool cut, which is interesting for a lot of the same reasons "Balada" is, though I think just slightly less successful:

Here the serious formality is set against something much more fun and playful, but I think just aesthetically I don't find it as satisfying.

And my definite favorite of the three, olive cut:

It's like he took the lens cut version above, got drunk, and started carving away at it. But it's more than that. The lines that swirl around the middle of it have completely distorted the whole vase as if you were seeing it in a fun-house mirror. There's something almost irreverent about this which appeals to me in the same way as Jaime Hayon's work for Baccarat. At the same time, it's utterly sculptural, dynamic, even futuristic.

Jabůrek also designed a couple sets of drinking glasses for Moser. Here's "Zero," which is extremely edgy and modern:


And "Galileo" which is some of the most suave and elegant glassware I've seen in a long time:

I'd like to point out that Moser specifically recommends against putting any of their pieces into a dishwasher. I don't have a dishwasher, anyway, much to my chagrin and ongoing annoyance (I very literally dream about having a dishwasher on a somewhat regular basis). The pin-point bottom of the champagne flute would be exquisite with the pale champagne color filling it up. However, if for some reason it were allowed to stand over night with the beverage still in it, it would be practically impossible to get clean the next morning. I'd never descend to living in squalor, but strict housekeeping is not one of my most reliable habits, so I have to consider these things. Regardless, they are visually stunning, and the soft, graceful curves of their stems would feel so perfect in one's hand.

©2010, Ryan Witte

Ornamentalism

Next I'd like to discuss the work of Micheal Schunke of Nine Iron Studios in Pennsylvania. He does some brilliant work with glass in many areas of design, but it was his goblets that really drew me into his booth.

Click for larger.
--All Nine Iron photos courtesy Vogel Imaging.

I love these for one of the same reasons I love Denis Collura's work so much: they're a combination of so many different stylistic elements. Schunke, it would seem, is pulling from the mid- to late-nineteenth century, as well as the early-teens of the twentieth, and something of the 1960s, amongst other things. All these references are then combined together to produce something quite familiar, but very new and vibrant at the same time.

But I'd like to explain my admiration in a different way. This glassware is not cheap. It's all completely hand-blown. Even if you were to order a set of eight identical pieces, it'd be perfectly clear they were created by hand, much to their benefit, in my opinion.


I think this is a great demonstration of the shift in my tastes in the past ten years. I often hear the grumblings about some of the new, more modern productions at the Metropolitan Opera. The elderly, mostly conservative audience there is no-no-notorious for adamantly booing anything even remotely innovative. This is not to say I don't fully bow down to the genius of Franco Zeffirelli, quite the contrary. But the more recent one that most particularly comes to mind is Bartlett Sher's Il Barbiere di Siviglia.


You know I love minimalism. As I've said elsewhere, three of my favorite artists of all time are Barnett Newman, Robert Ryman, and Donald Judd. But this isn't the mid-twentieth century anymore. If you're going to spend $500 on a ticket to see an opera, you deserve to expect more than a white scrim and some flower petals spread around on the stage. My argument is this: YES, by all means do new, inventive, modern productions (as long as they don't contradict the sensibility of the show, of course), push the boundaries of our perception of production design.

But this is the Met, the greatest opera house on the planet: give us something spectacular. Give us something that we could never see anywhere else. Give us something no avant-garde theater group would ever be able to manage. Give us a production of Wagner's Ring Cycle so incredible that it requires the installation of steel beams under the stage's wing so it won't collapse.

This is what I appreciate about Schunke's work. Sure, it isn't priced for Pottery Barn, but it's worth it and it shows. You don't have to be a glass artisan to look at these pieces and see the intense craftsmanship required to make them.


Don't get me wrong, for years I've had exquisitely minimalist wine glasses. Not cheap: one flick of your fingernail and the beautiful song that would result made it immediately apparent this was high-quality glassware. But what about showmanship? Must respectable quality always depend upon sober restraint? Should we really allow strict asceticism to control our embrace of artistic expression and sense of style? And while the Lobmeyr exhibit at the Cooper-Hewitt made me gush with enthusiasm, why does technical, material sophistication need to be invisible?

Schunke's work is refreshingly not mute. It has character by the truckload.

Now certainly one could choose a style one prefers and get a matching dozen. But I think this misses the point, and in fact, Schunke recommends his clients against it. Instead, the myriad textures of a varied set in one color combination would make for a truly intriguing table.

This was the way they were displayed at the booth, all the different shapes and sizes and textures jumbled together. And yet, the cohesiveness of the group was as plain as day. As an added bonus, it'd be impossible for any guest to mistake his or her glass for anyone else's.

©2010, Ryan Witte

A Wizard of Vase

(ADHDS)

Next we have Pablo Soto of North Carolina for Desoto Glass Design. I can't be sure of the actual dates of each of these collections, but there does seem to be a coherent progression. Some of the simpler work just shows a nice handling of line and color, as with the scarlet and saffron "Silhouettes":

And these "Colordrops":

Then there's the "Sidecar" collection, which somewhat playfully resembles laboratory equipment, but would also allow for creative arrangements of flowers, candles, whatever, and quite cleverly plays with the interactions of color:

Impressively, though, each further development really takes his work to a whole new level. He's taken the "Silhouette" pieces and carved these amazing geometric patterns into them, in fuchsia, scarlet, and amber:

Then in some of these smokier, earthier hues--bronze, sargasso, and aubergine--which I think look so very rich:

And even more startling is the collection in smoky blue and tea, which take on this very metallic quality that I think is amazing, and gives the geometric patterns a whole new character, almost microchip:

Last but not least are some decorative glass objects with a different surface treatment he equates to filigree, Moire-Blancos and Moire-Negro:

I love how--in overlapping groups--the surface treatment sort of plays tricks on the eye. It's like a person wearing a black & white herringbone suit on color television. And by the way, if I were ever asked to produce a music video, I often thought I'd use only those kind of patterns to play with the fact that color TV can't quite deal with them. Anyway, with Soto's pieces, it's a situation where 1 + 1 = 3, in that it transcends the basic physical form of the object to create a visual experience, exactly what great design should do. They initiate an active dialogue with the eye the person viewing them.

©2009, Ryan Witte

Glass You Like It

Here's the work of Brooklyn's John Pomp, glass blower.

He's of course done some glass vases, my favorites of which are these collections in white and black:

Interesting that this follows directly the Eastique post, because I think this might be the perfect item for their sideboard.  I'm thinking a row of identical tall, slender ones in back, and a row of identical short, squat ones in front.  And I think I'll go with black in this case, although I love the white ones, too...and let's say a single palm frond in each of the rear ones, a single yellow rose in each front one.  Awesome.

Okay, I just drifted off there...

I was especially impressed, though, by Pomp's lighting.  These are the items he was displaying at the show, and they only just went up onto the website, from what I can tell, so I'm glad I went back to look again.  Here's a large pendant:

First of all, you have the contrast between the sharp geometry of the outer glass encasement and the very organic hand-blown globes inside it.  Then this jumble of globes, each lit by a small bulb, creates all these overlapping patterns of glass, reflection, and shine.  There's something vaguely natural about this, too: I'm almost tempted to say like too many jellyfish in a fish tank.  It's extremely interesting.

Here's a sconce:

There's a shorter version of this, as well.  The dark glass and chrome makes this extremely elegant, but the visibly hand-blown glass diffusers and the different soft angles of the hardware keeps it from being too cold and stark.  It's quite subtle and interesting.

I really love these table lamps, too:

In a very romantic sort of way, they look like a forgotten century-old experiment from Thomas Edison's laboratory.  But the quality of light these would put off would be so ambient and moody, likely very flattering, as well.

I think my favorite of them may be this pendant:

It's four glass diffusers of the same proportions in diminishing size.  It creates all these amazing reflections from the light bulb off the layers of glass, while keeping the light from being too harsh.  It's almost mystical, but so simple and intriguing, warm and pleasing on the eye.

John Pomp Studios

718-486-9620

©2008, Ryan Witte

Tea Totally

(BD)

Here's a cool couple of things from Joey Roth.

At the show he was demonstrating his Sorapot:

It's actually really beautiful and simple.  There's a video of it in use on his site, but you unscrew the metal casing, put in the tea leaves, close it back up, and pour in boiling water.  Then you can watch the tea leaves unfurl as they steep:

Which will add to your enjoyment of drinking tea, no doubt.  The glass is Pyrex, and there's a wire mesh screen at the spout end to filter the leaves.  I happen to be a coffee drinker, myself, so I asked if he'd thought to use a finer metal screen for making coffee.  I'm not sure it would work as nicely, but he said he's working on putting together a type of French Press along those lines.

The packaging is quite nice, too, I think, made from the same material as egg cartons, so it's all recycled:

Roth has also designed a great glass teacup from which to drink your tea. Somehow it reminds me of a Vienna cafe at the turn of the century:

And a mouse:

The proportion of the buttons obey the Golden Mean.  It's made out of a soft wool felt, which he says allows it to be very comfortable without being "cartoonishly ergonomic."  I'll have to admit that, for the most part, mice only come in one shape, and it is rather boring.

Joey Roth

973-715-6583

©2008, Ryan Witte