Loetz Vase, ca. 1900
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GUEST:
My mother got this from a neighbor in Burlington, Iowa. This was back in the '60s. And she told my mom at the time that it was Tiffany. And it had a paper label on the bottom of it, and the maid had washed it in hot water and the label had fallen off.
APPRAISER:
What we have here was not made by Louis Comfort Tiffany. It was made by a company called Loetz, which was an Austrian company who made some very, very fine examples of iridized glass. And oftentimes, people have mistaken Loetz for Tiffany. And when Tiffany was becoming very popular in the 1960s and the 1970s, there were some unsavory characters who went out and took a piece of Loetz and put a very nice Tiffany signature on the bottom. Or if they had in their possession some paper labels from the Tiffany Studios, they would affix them to the bottom. Now, this was really easy to do because a lot of times, Loetz is unsigned, as is your piece. And you can see this beautiful, ground pontil right here. The pontil is the area where the piece has been broken off the stick, and there's usually a big piece of glass that has to be taken off in order for the piece to stand properly. And this is... Loetz always did this wonderful, smooth-ground pontil on the bottom of the piece. It was really made almost at the same time as the glass by Louis Comfort Tiffany. In fact, sometimes we're not sure whether Tiffany went to some of these world expositions and saw Loetz, or whether Loetz went to exhibitions and saw things that Tiffany was making. But this is truly a very nice Art Nouveau piece probably made around 1900. You have these wonderful raindrop spots that almost resemble butterfly wings. In fact, that is the term that Loetz used for this type of glass. If this were Loetz or Tiffany, sometimes they're almost the same value. And I would probably put a value of $3,000 to $4,000 on this piece.
GUEST:
Oh, my goodness. That's fabulous, that's fabulous. My mother would be so pleased.
APPRAISER:
Well, good.
Appraisal Details
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