Lot 0074
Rare Russian Cameo Glass Vase “Forest Landscape”, Imperial Glass Manufactory, St Petersburg, 1915
Estimate: 17000-22000€
A Rare Russian Cameo Glass Vase “Forest Landscape”
Imperial Glass Manufactory, St Petersburg, 1915
Multi-layer glass, acid-etched, carved.
Height: 23 cm. Diameter: 27 cm.
Marked on the underside NII in cyrillic and dated 1915,
A substantial spherical vase on a low spreading foot, conceived as a continuous forest panorama. The body is worked in layered glass of warm amber and reddish-brown tones, over which a dark silhouetted landscape has been etched: serrated fir trees, overhanging pine branches, boulders, reeds, and gently rippling water.
The piece belongs to the artistic vocabulary of Russian Art Nouveau, where glass became a medium of exceptional atmospheric power. Its decorative program is built not on isolated ornament, but on an immersive landscape image unfolding around the entire circumference of the vessel. This continuous treatment of surface, together with the nuanced play of translucency and matte engraving, gives the vase a distinctly painterly character. In the production of the Imperial Glass Manufactory, landscape motifs are comparatively uncommon, which makes this example especially noteworthy.
At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Art Nouveau glass drew on a wide range of sources, from medieval and classical art to folk traditions, but was especially shaped by the growing fascination with the Far East after the Paris World Exhibition, where Japanese decorative art had a profound impact. This influence encouraged an associative, image-based approach to design, in which color and ornament carried symbolic and emotional meaning.
Glass proved an ideal medium for Art Nouveau because of its rich chromatic range, luminosity, translucency, and painterly effects. These qualities gave works an organic, impressionistic expressiveness and made multi-layered cameo glass one of the most powerful vehicles of the new style in Europe and Russia alike.
The Imperial Glass Manufactory produced a remarkably varied range of Art Nouveau objects, characterized by flowing forms, curved ornament, and motifs drawn from nature. Landscape subjects, however, remained extremely rare and are known mainly from the first decade of the 20th century.
Starting price: 15000€
Estimate: 17000-22000€
Hammer Price: €
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Lot 0073
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Lot 0076
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