tour 21 of 21
The art of glass
Glass vase, designed by Chris Lebeau
This vase is unusual both in its angular shape
and in its strange yellowish-green colouring. The main vessel has
thin walls and was made by blowing into a wooden mould while being
spun round, a method known as 'turn mould-blown'.
The bottom part is much thicker, and was created by forcibly
pressing molten glass into an iron
mould.
It was designed in
1924-25 by Joris Johannes Christiann Lebeau (1878-1945), known as
Chris Lebeau, a talented but temperamental textile and graphic
designer who collaborated with the leading Dutch glassworks, NV
Glasfabriek Leerdam, between 1923 and 1926. Lebeau was one of
several outside artists recruited by the factory's
director, P.M. Cochius (1874-1938), to create new models in a plain
modern style after the First World War
(1914-18).
Because Lebeau
was a teetotaller, he refused to design wine glasses. Instead he
created an extraordinary group of vases with eccentric profiles
such as this, often composed of parallel or tapered rings. His
vessels, which sometimes had exaggerated stems and necks, were
highly idiosyncratic, and included some elaborate pieces that
pushed the glassmakers to the limit of their ingenuity. Ahead of
their time in the 1920s, Lebeau's designs were criticized
by contemporary commentators for their supposed resemblance to
laboratory glassware.