The Magic of Antique Glassware

Rare pair of late 19th Century Bohemian painted opaline glass portrait vases, signed by Josef Ahne, and decorated with contemplative reserves of young women, accompanied by flowering vines, and trimmed in gold.

The noted Bohemian glass-painter, Josef Ahne (1830-1909) was born in Nový Oldřřhov. At age 11, Ahne became an apprentice to Emanuel Hess, with whom he worked until 1848. For the next three years, Ahne worked under Ignaz Ulmann in the studio of Lammel-Halzel. Ahne worked at the Allmann glass refinery between 1857 and 1860 when he opened his own studio in Steinschonau, Bohemia. Ahne was an accomplished painter, specializing in figural compositions based on German and Italian artists. He received a medal at the Vienna Universal Exhibition of 1873, as well as a bronze medal at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1878. Images of these two medals are transfer-printed in sepia on the bottom of each vase.

Blown-molded from opaline-glass to suggest porcelain, each vase has a graceful baluster-shape, springing from a low round waisted foot, richly adorned in an impressionistic romantic style with a large oval reserve against a pale green etheral ground with two blue-birds cavorting in flight amongst others on the reverse, narrowly bordered in metallic-gold, crisply edged in dark-brown, and finished with a vine circumscribing the waisted foot bearing tiny pink flowers and small light-brown leaves. The reserves are symmetrically composed, influenced by the Italian Old Master painting, each featuring a young contemplative woman in a long robe, barefoot, wearing a head-band securing long blonde hair gathered upon her head, holding a small dark-brown earthenware vessel in a small clearing with a low earthen embankment, amongst flowering plants and low vegetation receding into a grey background, and mantled by a pair of flowering branches which is repeated in shadow on the reverse.



One scene depicts a young woman, facing toward the left in three-quarter perspective, holding her hand to her face deep in thought, gazing down at a small footed cup balanced in her lap with her other hand. She sits on a grassy embankment, beside a pond with a dragonfly hovering above flowering lily pads and grasses on the bank, accompanied by maiden-hair fern behind her and a low dark-brown fern in the near right foreground. She wears a sleeveless long white robe belted in yellow-gold, with a rose-pink cloth apron bordered in Greek-key. Above are two tulip-tree branches flowering in yellow-and-orange.

The reserve on the other vase depicts a young woman also standing in three-quarter perspective in front of a grassy embankment on the right, gazing down full of thought into the depths of a footed double-handled vase which she holds to her breast, flanked by hosta-type plants and a butterfly hovering above a fern behind her, and by white-flowering wild-flowers in the foreground. She wears a white robe trimmed with gold Greek-key, belted in magenta patterned with gold Greek-key, and a light-blue apron. Above are two apple-tree branches flowering in pink.

Dating is c. 1880. Good condition. Each vase measures 14" tall and 6 ½" diameter. (SM) $1,695.00 pair.