Twin flask and hanger

Museum number:

8-116

Permalink:

ark:/21549/hm21080000116

Accession number:

Acc.29

Description:

Twin flask and hanger (modern reproduction of Roman glass)

Donor:

Alfred Emerson

Collection place:

Mainz, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany

Verbatim coll. place:

Mentz; Germany

Culture or time period:

Classical Rome and German

Collector:

Alfred Emerson

Collection date:

September 15, 1900

Materials:

Glass (material)

Object type:

archaeology

Accession date:

December 27, 1902

Department:

Classical Mediterranean

Comment:

Excerpt from Too Good To Be True Exhibition Handlist (1992): Within the framework of the retrospective tendency of 19th century art, several workshops and firms in Italy, Germany, and Bohemia produced or commissioned more or less faithful imitations of ancient glass vessels. This "ancient" glassware decorated the homes of the prosperous along with copies of ancient and renaissance sculpture. The Phoebe Hearst Museum acquired 35 reproductions of ancient glass vessels made after originals of colonial Roman vintage from the Rhine valley. These copies were bought in Paris in 1901 from the Ludwig Felmer Glass and Porcelain Firm of Mainz, Germany. 28 Ludwig FeImer's finn, whose products are exhibited here along side genuine Roman glass, was active in the 1880s and 1890s. The finn made reproductions of over 150 different fonns of Roman, Frankish, Medieval, and Persian glass. Felmer was awarded a medal at the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893, and he exhibited at the Paris World's Fair in 1900. Although at the Paris World's Fair Felmer was listed as a manufacturer of glass vessels, he was, in reality, only a merchant-distributor who commissioned most of his vessels at the Josephinen foundry near Schreiberhau in Upper Silesia. Since 1881, this foundry produced iridescent glass copies for Felmer and other companies. At the time of their manufacture, the Felmer glass vessels were certainly recognized as replicas and were bought as such by the Phoebe Hearst Museum. The quality of the glass, however, and the faint iridescence of the surface (produced by exposing the red-hot vessel to the fumes of metal chloride) are convincing, and some specimens have indeed been sold as antiquities. 7. Copy of a glass double-balsamarium. Original dated to the third or fourth century A.D. and found in the Eastern Mediterranean. 8-116.

Loans:

S1962-1963 #3: Design Department (UC Berkeley) (July 23, 1962–August 2, 1962) and S1977-1978 #37: Alan Krosnick (February 14, 1978–February 17, 1978)

Images:

Legacy documentation: