Featured Art Deco Biscuit Jars

Hi all! I've been enjoying stalking all the topics and gleaning information from them.

I was browsing the Marketplace and I came across these two (well three) cookie jars from the same seller. I'm not particularly looking to buy them, but I do like them a lot and wondered if there was any info or pointers I could take on board. Particularly how to determine time period, maker/country of origin, and the whys and hows of it all.

Both are advertised as Art Deco, no marks shown or sizes given. The green is enamelled glass, does that give it its opaqueness? If so, are the other two enamelled glass also? Unless enamelled means a method by which the painting was done?













Thank you in advance! ​

 

It does. That's how the flower was put on. Is that one described as being deco? Closer in feeling to art nouveau or just plain Victorian. The pair are vaguely deco-ish.

 

@Bronwen Yes it was described as deco. Going by that I assumed that it was deco period but fashioned after an older style. Do you mean perhaps its of an earlier era then deco? How can you tell what is art deco? I mean there are some obvious examples but sometimes its not so blaring.

 

Usually 'art nouveau' & 'art deco' are not used to mean a time period unless the thing being described is also in the appropriate style, while something from a later time may be described as art deco if it is in that style. The deco time period was the Roaring Twenties.

Is your question how to recognize the styles or how to definitively date things to the period when the style was popular?

Biscuit jars are typically the same diameter/width all the way down, not tapered like the first vessel. Hoping someone who knows Victorian table ware will stop by & tell us what it is. Pickle castor?

 

The first one looks like late 1800s early 1900s. Satin glass with enamel painted flower.
It is in no way Art Deco in style. I'm looking at the silver plate handle design.

The pink ones are also satin glass with high spots burnished (probably not the correct term). They do have a little Art Deco Style to them. Maybe 1920s/30s. Only a guess though.

 

Can I ask if you are in the US or if you acquired these elsewhere?

 

Green looks late 19th Bohemian, imported to the UK I suspect, fittings added. It could be biscuits, it would take the little ones. Moulded ones are 1930s. They're very like much moulded pottery of the time here. I'm inclined to them being tea and sugar, being a pair and all.

 

The ad to the first one has been updated and described as Art Nouveau.

@Bronwen Both honestly. When I've heard of things being called Deco its been that they are directly from the 20s/30s/40s, otherwise they've been described as Deco style. If I could learn to distinguish the styles first I can then research them to find dates and learn from there. Like what makes the pair only a little deco?

These are listed in France (where I am), however the ad is in english so I don't know if a British person brought them with them when they moved here.

Interesting information! I looked up 19th century bohemian jars and they are very similar to the green. I didn't know bohemian meant it was made in Czech/Eastern Europe, good to know.

 

Beautiful, Rachel. I agree, the first one is late 19th century Bohemian, the set is 1930s Art Deco and looks French to me.

Bohemia is a former country, now it is one of the two regions that make up Czechia (former Czech republic, former Czechoslovakia etc). The other region is Moravia.
To complicate matters, at the time this was made, Bohemia was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

 

The clean, simple lines of the lids & handles are what make them look somewhat deco. That floral wallpaper design on the bodies is less fussy than high Victorian, but not very deco either.

Metal on first one looks like it could be silver, although silver plate more like. The fittings on the pink pair look chrome plated.

 

Pink ones could well be French, they did a lot of moulded glass like this.

 

I would not call the green one Art Nouveau. Just because something is of the same time period does not give it the same art/style lines to justify labeling it such.

 

So the consensus seems to be that the green is bohemian that was then imported to england?

It definitely would not surprise me if the pink jars were french, I see things like them all over the place around here.

Are you more of the mind that its victorian rather then AN then? I just did a very brief google search on Nouveau vs Deco, and except for the initial shape of the jar, its not very geometrical in its decoration or handle.

Would silver (plate) vs chrome speak for the quality or simply the era?

 

I'd call it late Victorian. Chrome was a fashionable thing in the 20s and 30s and didn't need polishing.

 

Chrome seemed very modern then & the trend was toward modern & away from traditional.

 

I have a tendency to put things in time periods rather than label them. Unless they specifically fit Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Greek Revival, etc. I do at times put things in the "style" of.
We are too dependent on labels. Things cross over too many lines to always be "something".

 

As long as search functions work primarily using words, all we can do is try to label as accurately as we can.

 

For searching yes that is true.
However, I still do not like that just about everything these days must be labeled.