In Glass Collector’s Digest, Volume IX*Number 2, August/September 1995 in an article entitled “Art Nouveau, Frederick Carder, and the Steuben Glass Works, an Exhibition at the Rockwell Museum” by Robyn G. Peterson, the author says at p. 61-62.

“Glass is a medium exceptionally well-suited to expressing the plastic qualities of Art nouveau design. All of the early Steuben pieces in the Art Nouveau manner invited the touch either through their flowing linear profiles (one can easily imagine them still taking shape in their molten form) or because of their rich textural effects. Motifs such as peacock feathers and clinging vines evoke the natural world that was the inspirational wellspring of Art Nouveau motifs. Carder seemed to wish to tame the unruly energy of Art Nouveau’s emphasis on line as a creative force that gathers up the entire object into a single rhythm. For Carder, line was used to organize and structure a static object. As American Art Nouveau glass author A. Christian Revi has observed, Carder created nothing accidental or irregular, and his classical training remained paramount. Certainly one sees random linear trails of glass on such pieces as Tyrian or the Decorated Aurenes, but they appear on forms that are elegant, precise, and symmetrical in conception. Sumptuous blossoms dance on long stems in Steuben glass just as they do in Galle’s or Tiffany’s; however, they are flowers of the English garden, not the untamed wilds. Carder’s forays into the spare and asymmetrical aesthetic of Japanese art, which so strongly influenced Europe’s Art Nouveau designers, are successful but few-Steuben’s Mat-su-no-ke pieces are the best examples. Carder’s flora and fauna are less a part of each object’s form and more an application to it; they exhibit a civilized control that would make them equally at home in textile design, book illumination, or many other arts in which a two-dimensional play of line can be used to advantage.

Webmaster’s Observations

This is a shape 3140 fingerbowl and underplate in Selenium Red and is engraved in Grape pattern. It is often difficult to identify the shape number of these pieces of stemware because only the goblet is usually only shown in the drawings. It helps when a photo can be found that includes the goblet along with other pieces of that pattern.