I stopped into a thrift on my lunch hour a couple of weeks ago, and was browsing through the glassware, when my eye fell on a small wine or brandy glass with a strangely thick stem. To be honest, my first thought was that it was plastic, because the stem had a matte, sort of frosted finish. But I picked it up, and realized that it
was glass, and that the bowl was very delicate, with a ground rim. The stem was molded with a sort of stylized pattern of grapes and vines. And as one usually does with a piece of glass, I turned it over to see if there were any markings. What I saw was:
R. Lalique, France. My heart skipped a beat. As my eyes moved down the shelf, I spotted four more of the small glasses, and two of a larger size (more of a sherbet or champagne glass.) I carefully gathered them up (not a chip among them) and went to the cashier.
Now, there are a
lot of Lalique fakes out there, but that's usually higher-ticket items - vases and other art glass pieces, rather than something more utilitarian like stemware. And if it turned out these were fakes - well, that's a chance you take, isn't it? There's also lots of documentation of the characteristics of real Lalique marks, which changed over time, of course, and are very helpful in dating a piece. For instance, "R. Lalique" would date prior to Rene Lalique's death in 1945 - and "R. Lalique" pieces fetch a good deal more than items manufactured later (as I understand it, the company dropped the "R" from their marks when their founder died.)
In the past two weeks I have spent a fair amount of time in the library and online, searching for an ID on the pattern of these glasses - I found another pattern in a very similar shape, with a similarly thick stem, which added to my growing certainty that they were indeed pre-1945 Lalique.
Over the weekend I finally got an ID - the pattern is called "Ricquewihr" (or "Riquewihr", which is a medieval town in the Alsace region, where Lalique's factory was [is?] located); the pattern was introduced in 1925 and made at least into the 1930s sometime.
Click on this link to see a pair of madera glasses in the same pattern (the five smaller glasses may be the same size as these - I haven't measured them yet to be sure.)
http://www.renelaliqueglass.com/phdi/p1.nsf/supppages/2900?opendocument&part=10 (the Riquewihr glasses are about 3/4 of the way down the page.)
