Well, we know some of you are reading this. Because it was misnumbered, but more importantly, the attachment didn’t open. Hopefully, this one works.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010
First off, Helaine Fendelman of New York City responds to what the increased sales at Christie’s represents.
Please note what Christies is selling and speak to dealers and see the huge discrepancy. Business is still hurting. Helaine

Rande Bly of Birmingham puts forth his thoughts on the development of Intarsia.
I wrote an article about 5 months ago on Carder’s experimental Intarsia with the assumption that more people were aware of it than there really were and left out documentation. After speaking to a number of collectors I came to realize almost everybody had never heard of it. I am writing it again with the proper documentation in hopes it may bring a piece or two to light.
Carder had this desire to capture a design suspended between two layers of glass while keeping the piece delicate in nature. His aim was to have the finished product at about 1/16 of an inch thick comprised from three layers of glass total. He began to experiment with this about 1916- 1917. The Corning museum
has information perhaps as early as 1914. The method to be used is actually a controlled Cintra technique. A clear gather of glass was rolled across the marver (a smooth cast iron plate used as the work table) where crushed and sifted pieces of glass were carefully placed in a pattern. The cylindrical gather would lift the pattern from the marver. The gather and pattern would then be returned to the pot and cased in clear crystal completing
the three layers of glass. It would then be formed into the finished piece.

We can see a unique example of controlled Cintra in Gardner color plate XVII C. In this piece the bird design was formed by gluing the crushed and sifted pieces of glass in a pattern of a bird to a piece of paper for stability. Then the gather was rolled across the pattern on the paper picking it up. The paper was later burned away and the glass pattern of the bird fused to the piece by reheating.

Carder’s attempts with his experimental Intarsia however was all freehand with nothing to stabilize the pattern. These were not just experiments and the glass was placed into production in 1920-1921. Carder discussed this type of Intarsia with Paul Perrot in May of 1960 who forwarded it Robert in a letter dated May 9, 1960. As far as I know there is no information of what the patterns consisted of but I can easily assume there were surely some of geometric design as were exampled in his 1929-1930 examples that we all know and have come to love. I can also easily imagine that the more complicated patterns such as flowers were not successfully accomplished due to the distortion that comes about from the expansion during the blowing process.

What we would look for would be simple stripes and zig-zag patterns. I will include a photo of a ziz-zag geometric pattern from our line drawings which was in existence during the 1929-1930 production of Intarsia pieces. The glass should be easy to identify and spot. We are simply looking for any trapped design suspended between two layers of glass with the finished product maintaining a thickness of around 1/16 of an inch. The crystal could be clear or colored. My piece is Topaz with Amethyst Design. In the colored pieces the color would be in the first gather. The colored design will be in the middle. The final layer would be of clear as customary for this process.

We were given the information in Gardner that no known examples of this type have yet come to light and been identified at the time of his book. I have a photo of my piece signed by Carder himself and we are presently researching two possible pieces that have come up in the process of Bob Mueller’s book. Photos will be withheld until further investigation is completed. The purpose of this article is perhaps someone else has another piece that fits this description that can help with this discovery or has seen a piece that fits this description. Pieces could easily be unsigned. Information in this article can be verified in Gardner’s book pages 73-74 and pages 358-359.We are looking for narrow vertical stripes or zig-zags formed from crushed powdered glass as the colored trapped patterns……that is of course unless one of you has the flowers?
Rande Bly

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