Various manufacturing processes such as casing, staining and painting transform identi-
cal basic shapes into variations which appear to have hardly anything in common apart
from the original shape of the glass.
Styiistic simplifications will not be used here. Nevertheless, there are traces of art nou
veau in encased overlay glasses with “painted” decoration (the “Melusin Glass” by
Loetz), of pure art deco in the colourfui zigzag of opaque painting (war glass by Josef
Hoffmann), of the ornamental “horror vacui” of black-gold in fantastic, slightly oriental
ornamentation (line drawings by Karl Massanetz). These contrast with “shape without
Ornament”, undecorated smooth cut glass (J. & L. Lobmeyr).
CRITERIA FOR CATALOGUING
The geographical limits were defined by the specific nature of the collection, the tem
poral limits by the years 1905 and 1925.
Further differentiation by an alphabetical listing of glass works or designing artists
hardly seemed advisable. Classification by factories would have necessitated an impos-
sible differentiation between producers of basic glassware and decorators, and the
designers of many glass vessels have still to be discovered. We know the names of
those who commissioned large parts of the collection, but not the names of the manu-
facturers. Thus the criteria of manufacturing and refining processes remain an estab-
lished method of Classification, within which a certain chronological order can be deter-
mined for individual blocks.
SOURCES
The Contemporary sources used were of many different types: on the one hand, inven-
tory entries, sometimes incorrect and usually incomplete, on the other designs and
working drawings (particularly from J. & L. Lobmeyr, Vienna, E. Bakalowits, Vienna and
the Wiener Werkstätte), Contemporary magazines (Studio, Deutsche Kunst und Dekora
tion, Dekorative Kunst, Kunst und Kunsthandwerk, etc.) and catalogues (particularly the
exhibition catalogues of the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry, unfortunately unillus-
trated), Contemporary photographs of items exhibited, and some of the few surviving
Company catalogues. In view of the fact that the museum has a considerable number of
Borussia glass vessels by Schappel, a special catalogue for this type of glass has been
fully incorporated in the present publication.
The archives of the Austrian Museum of Applied Art proved particularly informative,
especialiy with regard to the large exhibition of Austrian art and export glass held in the
year 1915.
PROBLEMS OF ESTABLISHING DATES AND ORIGINS
Strictly speaking, the dates recorded in the inventories (W.l. = traveiling exhibition inven-
tory, Gl = glass inventory) should be regarded as inventory dates only, and not always as
dates of acquisition. As Contemporary illustrations or other sources show, the glass Ob
jects themselves were occasionally made years before, or may in other cases have been
acquired immediately after manufacture.
The origin of items in the inventories is sometimes given as the decorator, in other in-
stances the factory, and often the above-mentioned commissioners of much of the
glass, Messrs. Bakalowits and Lobmeyr.
The exhibition of Austrian art and export glass, which took the form of a traveiling exhi-
