Decorative and lighting glass
Budapest was both a market and a manufacturing centre for the firm, and the objects gathered here cover the part of the assortment that was designed to be seen: decorative vessels, cased and overlaid glass, and above all the lighting glass that became one of the company’s best-known lines.
Lighting glass is a genre of its own. Shades, globes, chimneys and the ornamental parts of chandeliers had to satisfy technical requirements — resistance to heat, standard fitting diameters, predictable light diffusion — while still following the decorative fashion of the moment. The firm issued separate illustrated catalogues for these wares, revised at short intervals, and the surviving pieces show how quickly the styling changed while the underlying dimensions stayed fixed.
The decorative vessels shown alongside them illustrate the refining techniques the works had at its disposal: cutting, etching, matt and polished surfaces, applied colour and gilding, often combined on a single body. Where an object can be matched to a drawing, the corresponding plate is noted so that the intended decor can be compared with the finished piece.
http://gyujtemeny.imm.hu/kereses/kivitelezo/schreiber-uveggyar-zayugroc-1008
Standards behind the ornament
Behind the decorative variety of lighting glass lies a small number of fixed dimensions. Fitter diameters, gallery sizes and chimney bores were effectively industry standards, and a shade that did not match them was unsellable however handsome it looked. The catalogues therefore list the technical measurements first and describe the decor second — the reverse of the order used for table glass.
This is also why lighting-glass patterns changed so quickly. With the dimensions fixed, the only variable left was surface treatment, and the works could refresh an entire range simply by re-cutting, etching or colouring bodies that had not altered at all.