Moser is a luxury glass manufacturer
based in the city Karlovy Vary, in present
day Czech Republic, a city previously
known as Karlsbad in the north-eastern
part of the region of Bohemia, in what was
then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The
Moser company is well known for
manufacturing stemware, decorative
glassware, which is among the most
collected of the 20th and 21st century
decorative glass. From its humble origins
as a polishing and engraving workshop, the
company developed into a lead-free glass
manufacturer lasting through for the past
160 years.
The original company was founded in 1857
by Ludwig Moser, as a simple glass
workshop initially concentrating on
polishing and engraving blank glass pieces,
on behalf of other prestigious glass firms
of the time. The engravers followed long
established Bohemian design themes with
scenes of hunts, stags and wooded
landscapes, which very much appealed to
the indigenous population of Bohemia. It
took the company a couple of years to
begin designing and making its own art
glass products. Ludwig Moser was able to
develop a lead-free sodium-potassium
glass, which was not only ecologically
friendlier than the lead glass employed by
all other manufacturers of the time, but
also happened to be extremely hard and
resistant, remaining until this day the basis
of the Moser products. This fact
contributed to an increased interest in the
company’s products. At the Vienna
International Exhibition of 1873 Ludwig
Moser’s company was already 15 years old
and not only well established but also
renowned and was awarded a medal for
merit, being also appointed the exclusive
supplier of glass to his majesty the
Emperor Franz Joseph I. The company
would continue to obtain numerous other
awards in the coming years, including
medals at the World Exhibitions in Paris in
1879, 1889 and 1900, and the World
Exhibition in Chicago in 1893. Ludwig
Moser proved to be not only a master
glass-maker but also a very astute
business-man, by taking over a glass
factory in the area Meierhofen bei Karlsbad
in 1893 as to create, together with is two
sons Gustav and Rudolph, a huge glass-
manufacturing industry, employing more
than 400 people under the name of
Karlsbaderglasindustrie Gesellschaft
Ludwig Moser & Söhne. Moser opened also
a number of shops to sell his wares in the
affluent areas of Karlsbad and then
concentrated on the various spa towns
where the waters attracted Europe’s
aristocracy.
In 1904 Moser received a warrant to supply
the Imperial Court of the Emperor of
Austria and in 1908 the company became
supplier to the English king Edward VII. It
was around that period when the company
started using extensively the motto
“Moser, King of Glass, Glass of Kings” as
associated with its famous royal clientele
who, in addition to Edward VII and the
Austrian Imperial Court, included Pope Pius
XI, Abdul Hamid II, Sultan of the Ottoman
Empire, the king Luís I of Portugal and his
spouse, Maria Pia of Savoy.
The city of Karlovy Vary became occupied
by Nazi Germany in 1938 after the Munich
Agreement and the Moser family fled the
country during this anti-Semitic period.
During World War II the Moser Glass
manufacture was taken over by the
invading German government and all the
workers you were jewish were interned into
concentration camps. The glass workers
who were left were put to work for the war
effort and in a passive retaliation they
managed to create for the tank windows
flawed glass that would shatter on impact.
After the war and because of its
international reputation, the company was
able to retain some independence during
the communist era while the rest of the
Czech glass industry was nationalised in
1948, being one of 15 companies granted a
kind of autonomy by the Communist
regime.
Ludwig Moser was one of the few
Czechoslovakian glassmakers to sign their
pieces. He realised quite early on that an
easily recognisable ‘trademark’ other than
a signature could also become quite
important to customers who wanted to
show off their Moser glass in a showy yet
discrete manner. Being inspired by the
forests of Bohemia, he achieved this by
using applied glass acorns, polychrome
enamelled oak leaves, enamelled bugs and
applied grapes. His other known
distinguishing features included raised
enamel birds. Moser was also influenced
by the European art movements of the time
and produced designs inspired by
European Baroque works, Japanese
ceramics and Islamic goldsmiths. He also
created a thick coloured glass as well as
molded clear glass with inclusions of
coloured glass. Moser vases were often
dark blue, purple and amber and had
patterns cut into them in shallow relief.
Moser created also clear glassware with
purple or green glass carved into cameos.
This deeply carved glass had extremely
precise edges and was beautifully
decorated with flowers and figures.
Johann Hoffman was one of the early
Moser designers. He often used opaque
purple or black glass to create everything
from goblets to bookends and particularly
enjoyed the use of animal figures or female
nudes in his masterpieces.
In the years around 1890 the Moser glass
manufacture introduced the use of gold
leaf pressed between two layers of glass
which were intricately decorated with floral
patterns and flowers This complicated
process is known as “Zwischengoldglas”
and such glass pieces are signed with the
Moser hallmark.
In the 20th Century Moser produced a new
range of glass called Alexandrite. This
unusual glass was named after the stone
alexandrite with its most distinctive
property being that it can change it’s
colour according to different lighting
conditions. The glass appears lilac in
natural sunlight or yellow artificial light
which imitates daylight, and smokey blue in
flourescent/halogen light. This is due to
the presence of Neodymium oxide (Nd²O³)
in the glass, hence it is also known as
neodymium glass.
- (RL.0890)
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