Dish

Victor Amalric Walter (1870-1959) created this pâte de verre (glass paste) dish in the 1920s. The designer has balanced a chameleon on the rim with the reptile’s head pointing towards the centre of the dish. A multi-part mould made from a high refractory material was required to produce kiln-fired glass in this novel shape. Walter designed many small bowls with reptile, insect and amphibian forms incorporated at the rim.

Inspired by innovative glass paste artist, César Isidore Henri Cros (1840-1907), Amalric Walter developed his own pâte de verre designs while employed at Daum Glassworks in Nancy between 1904 and 1905. [1] During this period, Walter collaborated with the modeller, Henri Bergé (1870-1937), signing these works ‘Daum Nancy’. Walter was permitted to continue manufacturing glass from the master models he had developed for Daum. [2]

After the First World War, Walter established his own glass studio in Nancy in 1919 and his partnership with Bergé continued until Bergé’s death in 1937. [3] This dish has been signed ‘A Walter Nancy’ on its inner rim and dates from the post-war period.

Pâte de verre is coloured using metallic salts and oxides, with finer details painted in enamels to the surface of the mould The dish in the Sainsbury Centre Collection combines mid-blue and golden yellow, and has an aqua stripe running across the middle of the dish where the two colours meet. The golden yellow colour was possibly produced using uranium oxide. [4]

Vanessa Tothill, January 2021

[1] Jean Hurstel, ‘Amalric Walter (1870-1959) créateur de la pâte de verre a l’École de Nancy dès 1904’, Le Pays Lorrain: revue régionale bi-mensuelle illustrée 81 (2000), (pp.183-85) p. 184.

[2]Keith Cummings, Contemporary Kiln-formed Glass(A&C Black, 2009), p. 28.

[3] Hurstel (2000), p. 184.

[4] http://www.artericerca.com/vetro%20francese/walter%20amalric/Amalric%20Walter%20-%20Max%20Stewart.htm Max Stewart, ‘The Almaric Walter Research Project and subsequent development’ [accessed 12 January 2021]