One of the greatest pitfalls for the collector of Czech glass is to assume that books provide reliable information. In the Passau Museum Catalog, Band IV, Published in 1995, the section called "Unknown Manufacturers" even includes American glass (which leads me to think the designers of Dugan iridescent lines, in 1906, knew their Czech glass so well they were able to fool the experts!) But I am concerned here with a particular page with four vases:
In 2001, I was able to get from Jeff Weller copies of a set of photographs from the Passau Museum he had taken when he visited in 2000. I was totally shocked to find these vases in a case marked Poschinger. When I finally made it to Passau in 2006 with Eddy Scheepers, the webmaster at www.loetz.com , the vases were still there and the classification had not changed. This is a 2000 photograph. At the time the vases were in case 258
2. PM CASE 258, 2000
Of particular importance for me was the tall white vase with reddish feathering, because I owned an inkwell in the same type of glass:
2. AVC COLLECTION
I followed the PM's classification and called my inkwell a Poschinger. However, there was a slight problem: I found other inkwells with the same shape but different decors exhibited as Kralik! Here is the photograph: 3. KRALIK INKWELLS IN THE PM
At this point, I began to suspect a major identification SNAFU. Then, I received a photograph from a British friend, Wayne Pattinson, of a vase I had in the Poschinger tortoise shell decor, and now appeared in Kralik's all too well documented Bacillus decor!. My vase:
4. TORTOISE SHELL DECOR
And Wayne's:
The net result is the addition of at least seven new decors to the literature on Kralik:
6. TORTOISESHELL
8-9. RED VASES WITH LOOP DECORATION SIMILAR TO TORTOISESHELL
9. WHITE OPAL GLASS WITH RED FEATHERING
These 4 decors are in my collection, but we must also count the blue opalescent with gray feathering in the PM photograph, and the green and blue decors on the inkwells already labeled Kralik. To make matters even more interesting, my friend David Littlefield has been assiduously collecting barber bottles he thought were Poschinger, but now may be the clue to a stunning array of Kralik decors. This bottle matches the blue thread inkwell:
10. BLUE THREADING ON FROSTED
And now the grand finale. Thanks, David!
11. BARBER BOTTLE COLLECTION, DL
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