Austria, Vienna
J. & L. Lobmeyr

The glass retailer J. & L. Lobmeyr of Vienna has been a tastemaker in luxury glassware and lighting devices since the first half of the 19th century. Their spectacular enamel-painted “Flower Series” included a large variety of luxury tableware of which less than a handful of examples survive.

This plate exemplifies the eclectic style of historicism (Historismus) popular in Continental Europe, in which artists looked back to previous styles for inspiration. The plate combines monochromatic Classical palmettes around the outer edge, a wide band of luscious acanthus scrolls recalling 17th-century Baroque motifs, and the delicate flowers, insects, and snakes abundant on porcelain and glass of the Empire and Biedermeier styles of the first half of the 19th century in Austria and Germany.

 

Glass, mold-blown, tooled, enameled and gilded, designed in 1888
Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott, 1983.9