Loetz Vase with drawn handles experimental decoration ca. 1901

This unique vase occupies a unique position in every possible way within the Loetz production facility and also illustrates the willingness of this leading glass manufacturer in Europe to be experimental and innovative.The decoration captivates with its strongly contrasting colors, consisting of a dark purple underlay and iridescent, irregularly distributed dots or also called “silver oxide flakes”, combined with green-violet overlays in the same iridescent color splendor.

To this day, even within the specialist literature, this decoration, so unusual for Loetz, cannot be identified. This vase with its bulbous shape, the pulled out handles as well as the regularly curved mouth, does not suggest any comparable object from the production. The vase was model blown and then free formed.

A single example with the same decoration and only a simplified mouth and three handles instead of six can be classified as a prototype of the vase shown here. The experimental decoration and the form, which was further developed after the prototype, also result in the art-historically valuable special position of this work of art. The assumption is obvious that this collector’s item, that is signed with “Loetz Austria”, is not only a highly valuable but also a unique piece.