Exhibits in museum institutions
Pattern books tell you what a glassworks intended to make. Surviving objects tell you what it actually sold, how the drawing was translated into glass, and which of the proposed decors were ever put into production. This part of the archive brings the two together by presenting pieces of J. Schreiber & Neffen glass held in public collections alongside the drawings that correspond to them.
The selection covers the whole working life of the firm, from the pale enamelled and gilded vessels of the years before 1874 through the pressed table services of the late nineteenth century to the cut and etched wares and the lighting glass of the interwar decades. Each entry gives, where it is known, the type of glass, the technique of refining, the principal dimensions and the pattern or inventory number, so that a piece in hand can be compared with a documented example.
The groups are arranged by the collection in which the objects are kept. Photographs of the objects are reproduced by courtesy of the institutions concerned and remain their property; they are shown here for study and identification purposes.
- Moravská galerie v Brně — enamelled and gilded vessels, pressed table glass
- Muzeum Narodowe w Krakowie — export wares for the Galician market
- Iparművészeti Múzeum Budapest — decorative and lighting glass
- Slovenská národná galéria — cut and engraved services
Reading an object against a drawing
Matching a surviving piece to a pattern-book drawing is rarely a matter of a single glance. The drawing shows an intention: a profile, a decor and a mould number. The object shows what the works could actually achieve on the day it was made — a slightly different wall thickness, a mould seam in an unexpected place, a decor simplified because the original version proved too slow to execute.
The features that survive best are dimensions and proportions. Glass shrinks predictably, so a height given in a catalogue and a height measured on an object should agree to within a few millimetres. Mould numbers, where they were pressed into the base, are the strongest evidence of all, and it is worth turning a piece over before looking anywhere else.