Clutha vase

Christopher Dresser

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Dresser came to glassware relatively late in his career. This vase belongs to the group of glassware trademarked "Clutha" in 1888 by the Glasgow-based glassworks of James Couper & Sons. From this date until 1896, Christopher Dresser was sole designer of Couper & Sons’ Clutha glassware, which was retailed by Liberty & Co. in London from the 1880s until around 1900. The name "Clutha" was deliberately historicizing, being the old, perhaps romanticized, Gaelic name for Glasgow’s river Clyde. In an article published in the 1870-73 Technical Educator, Dresser celebrated how "Glass has a molten state in which it can be blown into the most beautiful shapes" and the designs of most of Dresser’s Clutha vases depend upon this singularity of the production process; embracing irregular, organic forms and prizing the colored striations, as well as bubbles, particular to the medium, which Dresser also admired in Roman glass. Liberty & Co.’s publicities described Dresser’s Clutha glassware as "decorative, quaint, original and artistic".

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.

Metropolitan Museum of Art