As individuals progress in their collecting journey, they often become bored with the commonly seen pieces and the ones that are easily identifiable by simply opening a company’s model book and seeing your exact piece. While these examples are often iconic and certainly beautiful, they get a bit tiresome and lose a little bit of their mystique, in my opinion, after showing up at every major Murano glass auction year after year. For this reason, I find myself gravitating towards the lesser known and, in some cases, the unknown in order to satisfy my yearning for research and possessing something more than simply rare in theory. On that vein, I recently stumbled upon a wonderful glass bowl and was instantly mesmerized by its beauty. From the shape and décor type, I had a very good notion that it was of Murano origin and had a few thoughts regarding glassblower and producing furnace. I knew this was not an object I could simply open a book and turn to page x to find, but rather something that would take research and logical reasoning to attribute. This article will articulate my thoughts and research process surrounding the bowl in question to hopefully help those in their own research.
The bowl has noteworthy form and décor elements that provide numerous clues for where to start the research process. Beginning with form, it is of organic nature with a wider end curving gently to the narrower end, each of the four sides possessing a dip in the rim. The ends have a shorter downward curve, while the sides have a longer, deeper curve. This shape was used extensively by Archimede Seguso for his own furnace in the fifties, though it is most often seen in a slightly smaller size, so that is my first point of reference. The décor is comprised of crystal pulegoso glass with a thin layer of streaked ruby overtop and patches of metallic bubble inclusions, which are generally within gaps, or windows, where the ruby layer is missing, revealing the clear pulegoso glass. The streaked ruby layer is darker surrounding each of these windows. Finally, the entire bowl is submerged in a thick layer of clear glass. Evaluating the décor, it looked earlier than the shape initially implied, and I remembered a few short-lived glass techniques that Archimede Seguso created while he was employed at Seguso Vetri d’Arte, so that is my second point of reference and where I continued my research.
Opening the Heiremans book on Seguso Vetri d’Arte, a few noteworthy and rare glass techniques devised by Archimede Seguso can be found from the late thirties and early forties. The first one being a bolle metalliche or a bollicine metalliche dating to 1937, which consists of metallic sediment being captured within small air bubbles resulting from a chemical reaction. The second related glass technique is Piton d’Oro dating to 1939, which consists of amber/brown “windows” within a bollicine metalliche glass walls. The third being pulegoso (bollicine) con finestre rubino dating to 1941/42, which is related to the former but consists of colorless pulegoso glass with ruby “windows” set within. These three glass techniques can be found in thick-walled glass articles and were often submerged in a very thick layer of clear glass. In looking through the selective model list, I came across model 7008 that has within the reproduced drawing a notation of “crist pulegoso quadri rubino” which roughly translates to crystal pulegoso (with) ruby painting. Another related model in the book is number 7034 which has the notation of “cristallo pulegoso a tache rubino” which translates to crystal pulegoso (with) ruby spots. Model 7016 appears to have a related glass technique based on the drawing, but there is no caption within the reproduced drawing. All three of these models belong to the 1941/42 time period. None of these three models, as they appear in the book, appear in the online archive by a simple model number search or by paging through the website in a manual fashion. They were discontinued pre-war models and the numbers were reissued in the early fifties, so the reissue models are what is returned in the model number search. More explanation of this situation is in a subsequent paragraph.
Moving my search efforts for décor types to the Seguso Vetri d’Arte online archive made available by the Giorgio Cini Foundation, I found a model of a similarly shaped bowl, number 5049, from 1939 that has a caption of “cristallo pulegoso striature rubino” which translates to crystal pulegoso (with) ruby streaks. I could not find another reference of this technique on the archive or anywhere else, but the clear pulegoso glass with ruby streaks certainly relates to the bowl in question, albeit missing the metallic bubble inclusions.
Going back to the discussion of form, I paged through the selective model list in the Heiremans book on Seguso Vetri d’Arte, but did not find the shape. So, I turned again to the Seguso Vetri d’Arte online archive. After paging tirelessly through hundreds of pages of models, I found a matching shape, model 7260 dating to 1941/42. It should be noted that in 1946 Flavio Poli decided to discontinue and remove from the model list many pre-war models dating to 1941/42. In 1950, he then started to backfill those now vacant numbers with newly designed models. This is a source of immense confusion for researchers today. Then, in 1953, Mario Pinzoni joined Seguso Vetri d’Arte as assistant to Flavio Poli and was tasked with creating a showroom catalog for internal use that was comprised of tiny drawings of each model going back to 1939. With the reissue of model numbers, this catalog cannot be used with great accuracy to date pieces until about model 9600, circa 1954, when Flavio Poli ceased reissuing numbers and continued with model numbering successively. A point I would like to mention regarding the Seguso Vetri d’Arte online archive is that certain discontinued model numbers cannot be readily found in the archive via a model number search, as the reissue model will turn as your result. If you go through the archive page by page, not in the showroom catalogs, you will see the reissued models mixed in with the earlier models. Thus, you will see pieces designed in the early fifties next to those designed in 1941/42, but the reissued models will have a design date of the earlier period mentioned in the page blowout. To differentiate production periods, one must examine the piece in the drawings and associated glass techniques in the captions. Along with that, it appears as though the original use of the model numbers were drawn in pencil, and some of the reissued models utilizing the earlier numbering appear to be drawn in ink pen and colored using watercolor paints. This is not a cut and dry distinction of original versus reissue, as there are reissued numbers also drawn in pencil. Personal judgement is your best bet.
Going back to the bowl in question, given the aforementioned glass techniques, it becomes apparent that my bowl is presumably a combination of all of them. As mentioned previously, the bowl possesses crystal pulegoso (bollicine) glass with patches of a bollicine metalliche within windows breaking up the thin layer of ruby streaks. The technique is not simply an inversion of one of the above, but rather a separate glass technique in its own right that mixes elements of many. After looking at all of these datapoints, I would surmise that my bowl was blown by Archimede Seguso for Seguso Vetri d’Arte circa 1941/42. As a reminder, Archimede Seguso was employed at this furnace through January of 1944. Additionally, according to Marc Heiremans in his book highlighting Seguso Vetri d'Arte, the techniques of Piton d’Oro and pulegoso (bollicine) con finestre rubino were never commercialized due to their extreme complexity of execution and reliance on a single glassblower, Archimede Seguso, who created them. It would seem that the technique exhibited in my bowl would fall under that same heading. I have yet to find a comparable example, but if anyone reading this article has anything relevant to share, please send me an email.
Over time, as you familiarize yourself with the histories of Murano furnaces, the design hallmarks of individuals, and the production attributes of certain companies, you will be able to reduce the pool of attribution possibilities and guide yourself through a more successful identification process. To get to this point, it takes an immense amount of time and effort, a keen sense of design, and an eye for details. As with any field of collecting, but perhaps more so with Murano glass, the nuances are plentiful, and the histories are overlapping and blurred. I hope the above explanation of my general attribution process was helpful to some readers. Lastly, I offer a simple one-liner to many new collectors who reach out for help, “do not memorize, familiarize.” See, handle, and evaluate as much as you can.
