Art Peritus Selects

Baccarat (French, est. 1764)

Established in 1764 in the small village of Baccarat, France, the glass workshop Verrerie de Sainte Anne was started by the Bishop of Metz to employ the local craftsmen of the village. Makers of windows, bottles and tableware, the workshop flourished and was eventually purchased by the great French glassworks Voneche in 1815, forming a new company Voneche-Baccarat. In 1822 the glassworks was sold and the new owners set up the Compagnie des Cristalleries de Baccarat, originally keeping Voneche as part of the name until 1843. Today, Baccarat remains the foremost glassworks in France, winning medals at major exhibitions in Paris as far back as 1823 through to the present.

It is believed that Baccarat first exhibited a similar vase to the present piece at the Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts, in Paris in 1925. The vase design was inspired by Asian art and design, an artistic movement known as Japonisme which was popular among European artists and designers during the Art Deco era. Here, the present vase bears the name of its original designer, Vesques, whose name appears in Asian-style font within a cartouche on one side of the vase. The present version was created in 2001 and is numbered one out of an edition of only ninety-nine vases produced. Crafted in Baccarat’s celebrated onyx crystal, the black glass takes on the rich, reflective qualities of lacquer. The vase is decorated in an Asian floral motif that is carved and painted in polychrome enamels that gives the appearance similar to Japanese woodcut prints as well as the Chinese technique called coromandel, which is incised color on lacquer.