TS owns a cocktail bottle collection and sent photos of two silver overlay on glass decanter bottles. One features a heavy design of thistles, referencing Scotland The other features a fanciful crowing rooster and his rooting mate. These two glorious bottles, both little treasures, show two different techniques of silver overlay glass. The thistle bottle I place at $300, the chicken bottle I place at $150.
TS writes that he collects all kinds of decorative liquor bottles. His collection includes Murano glass decanters, silver overlay, old cut crystal from the 19th century, and colored blown glass decanters, quite small from the Georgian era. Not to mention good American Pittsburgh glass from the late 19th century. But his collection lacks American examples from about 1920 to 1935. Let me tell you the reason for this, and give an example of how politics influences art.
The chicken bottle dates from the 1930s and the thistle bottle from the 1920s. You probably think people didn’t DRINK in the 1920s due to Prohibition. But folks in Great Britain didn’t have that problem! So TS expanded his horizons of collecting to include British bottles when the US went DRY.
Silver Overlay Technique
Artisans invented the silver overlay over glass and porcelain technique in the late 19th century. A highly technical process, developed mainly in Germany. From whence come the most sought-after examples created in the Art Nouveau style. Two scientific properties make it possible. The non-conductivity of glass and porcelain, and the conductivity of silver, which allows it to bind to itself and other metals.
An artisan, in the case of the chicken bottle, painted those birds on the glass with a mixture of silver and turpentine oil. The bottle is fired, and cooled, and placed for up to 30 hours in a silver solution bath, and zapped with electricity. Silver binds to the design. Because the relief is ‘low,’ the depth of the overlay, the design appears almost flush with the glass, which indicates the design was etched in silhouette with acid before painting. This makes for a painstaking process, as the etcher must match the filler’s and painter’s job. You can see that this technique wasn’t easy in the first two quarters of the 20th century.
On the thistle bottle, the relief (the silver depth) appears fairly high, using a greater amount of precious silver, and points to the greater skill and time spent by the artisans. The more silver used, the higher the relief, and the more pronounced and permanent the design. If you polished a piece of low relief silver overlay, you gradually wear that deign away. Early (1890-1929) silver overlay glass and porcelain, especially pieces made in Germany, bear a greater silver content By the 1950’s most wedding caches included a cheap silver overlay candy dish!
This technique became popular on German porcelain. Rosenthal made some great designs, and Gorham in the US became a leading maker of silver overlay on glass.
1890-1939
These objects of 1890-1939 contain an inventive combination of chemistry, electro-magnetic, physics, art, and specialized craftsmanship. That era also saw the Arts and Crafts Movement, which philosophically opposed industrialization of the arts, and eschewed mass production in factories. Despite the highfalutin aims of the Arts and Crafts Movement, the very people who ‘needed’ good art couldn’t afford it. Conversely, silver overlay required a whole factory, many scientists, and electronic equipment. Whereas the Arts and Crafts movement aimed to provide every household in England and the US with honest, simple, artistically correct handmade objects. Those hand -wrought pieces proved more expensive. Likewise, only to those with “extra” money afforded silver overlay because the factory process involved specialized workers over a certain length of time.
Silver overlay flourished despite the aesthetic aims of the Arts and Crafts Movement, and the wealthy seemed drawn to the gleam of precious silver. Earlier pieces sold in the best jewelry shops, and the Royal House of Saudi Arabia ordered a huge dining service in silver overlay porcelain. Silver overlay, a luxury object became “middle class” in the 1950s. Just ask that candy dish on your grandmother’s Hi-Fi. She received it as a wedding present from her brother Joe, a butcher in the 1950’s in the Bronx.