Baroque Stemware

Origins

• European glass-making advances had come a long way by the time Bohemian Baroque glass art became the rage throughout Europe in the early 17th century. Intricately incised glass cups engraved for Emperor Rudolph II may have initiated the trend, but it didn't take long for every monarch on the continent to command their nation's most prestigious glass blowers to produce unique and lavishly engraved stemware in the Baroque fashion. Some areas of Europe produced finer stemware than others. The artisans of South Bohemia and Venice were widely acknowledged as the most creative Baroque stemware stylists.

Advances

• Glassblowers, fed up with seeing their hard work demolished due to tall, fragile stems, began to focus on the designs of cups to encourage the wealthy to stop demanding such tall stemware. Their job was made easier as new developments in diamond-engraving techniques debuted, which gave glass makers the ability to explore a wider range of cut patterns. The most highly sought Baroque stemware pieces featured so many incised cuts, the number of light refractions a glass gave off became the new standard for quality and beauty. For a brief period, southwestern Bohemian glassblowers created matching lids to fit atop stemware, but that fad didn't last very long.

Themes

• With the advent of diamond-engraving tools, glass-making techniques and innovations turned some of the most skilled glass designers into stars. An endless variety of complex, incised Baroque patterns and themes appeared on stemware, and the influence of Renaissance art became extremely popular as the 17th century came to an end. Baroque stemware featuring birds, animals and entire landscapes that wrapped around the bowls became increasingly popular, some featuring complex pastoral and hunting scenes right down to the tiny, incised figures of men on horseback and women relaxing amid beautiful landscapes.

Gold Standard

• While European glass makers continued to focus on diamond-cut stemware designs as the 18th century drew near, a different school of Baroque stemware art emerged in Russia that downplayed glass cutting and replaced it with painted trim --- but not just any painted trim. Gilt finishing became fashionable in Russia where gold was plentiful. Gold was used to apply gorgeous Baroque art and patterns to stemware bowls by specialized designers working exclusively for Russia's Imperial Glassworks studios. Much of that heritage remains, thanks to Russia's State Hermitage Museum collection of Baroque stemware. Of particular note is the library of Baroque chinoiserie (Chinese-influenced glass patterns) produced by Russian glassblowers that remains part of the museum's permanent collection today.