Artist: Christopher Dresser
Date: 1889
Museum: Museum of Applied Arts (Budapest, Hungary)
Technique: Glass
A long, twisted and wavy bottle with a collar-like, splaying top rim. The blue-green, bubbled glass is enriched with silvery, glittering mica grits and yellow-white and red stripes. This bottle is an outstanding example of the «Clutha»-type glass designed by Christopher Dresser. Jenő Radisics published the piece described above as one made by the Dobson and Rose company. However, the marking on the bottle - and the initials of the manufacturing factory - without doubt prove that it was made by the James Couper &Sons company.Christopher Dresser (1834–1904) was one of the foremost British designers of his time. He started to take a particular interest in glass as an artistic material in the 1880s, when he designed Clutha glass for James Couper &Sons of Glasgow. The word Clutha is claimed by some sources to have come from the Gaelic name for the River Clyde. Another suggestion is that it comes from the word “cloudy”. Clutha glass was a distinctive product of James Couper &Sons, freeformed blown glass, with characteristic bubble inclusions and coloured in bands. The shape is often twisted and asymmetric. In line with the principle of the Arts and Crafts movement of John Ruskin (1819–1900) and William Morris (1834–1896), Dresser preferred to work with the glass in its molten state, considered the best way to bring out its special features. An article reviewing works designed by Christopher Dresser in The Studio in 1899 included several illustrations. One of these shows a piece analogous to the Museum of Applied Arts’ Clutha vase, but the latter is certainly a decade older. The director of the Museum of Applied Arts at that time, Jenő Radisics (1856–1917), first encountered the vase at the Paris World’s Fair in 1889. It was bought by Louis Delamarre- Didot, who generously gifted it to the Museum in 1890.
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