Pair of Bohemian Hand-Blown Pallme Konig (Elizabethhütte) Art Nouveau Iridescent Vases with Silver Collars, 1907

A pair of hand-blown ruby iridescent glass vases by the Bohemian glass manufacturer Pallme Konig, decorate with trails of impressed white glass. The vases are topped with English silver collars by William Henry Sparrow, one with a London and the other with a Birmingham hallmark, both dated 1907.

The silver collars show some damage. The glass and vases themselves are in perfect condition.

The Pallme glassworks was first established in Steinschonau, Austria, in approximately 1786 by Ignaz Pallme-Konig. In the 1880s and 1890s the firm of Pallme-Konig was making and exporting high quality engraved glass and chandeliers. Around the turn of the century, they merged with Wilhelm Habel‘s Elizabethhutte glassworks near Teplitz and became known as "Glasfabrik Elisabeth, Pallme-Konig and Habel". During the Art Nouveau period, this glass company produced high quality iridized glass. Hot glass trails were wound around the iridized glass forming a network, and the piece was then blown into a mould so that the trails were pressed into the glass. The output from the Elizabethhutte was, and still is, very highly regarded in Austria. Production of this beautiful, highly specialised type of design continued until the early 1920s.