Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Glassy Napoleon

Bottle, Figure of Napoleon Bonaparte (Late 19th c.)
American
7 1/4 x 2 x 2 in.
colorless, pressed glass
Brooklyn Museum of Art

Fantastic little caricature of Napoleon. This reminds me of a quirky little museum that I went to in Munich called ZAM (I must mention the awesomeness of the internet here, as I would never have remembered the name of the museum or where it was without it). It was a museum of little museums. There was a chamber pot museum, an Easter bunny museum and some others. I particularly remember the chamber pots. Many had illustrations in the bottom of them, often of unsavory people such as Hitler. Definitely elicited some giggles.

A unique way to create a novelty item, in pressed glass. The technique of pressed glass allowed a faster, lower cost way of creating glass objects (as opposed to glass blowing).



2 comments:

chandra said...

http://www.linotagliapietra.com/riverstone/index.htm

http://www.dantemarioni.com/index.php?page=detail_current&artID=57

http://www.morganglassgallery.com/artists/donofrio.htm

suggestions for blown glass - i met these guys when I was a kid - love their stuff!

A.L. said...

excellent. We have a tagliapietra piece in our current show at work. I'll have to check on the other 2 guys.