Elegant glass companies in the 1920s and 30s produced patterns that included decorative pieces, stemware and dinnerware, but most people who could afford glass such as Fostoria or Cambridge used china dinnerware. Thus glass firms made many interesting bowl shapes for decorations and centerpieces. Often these decorative bowls matched stemware lines, extending the market appeal. Thus the console bowl was born!
Console bowls were wide, shallow bowls that were meant to display on a side table or in a hallway. They are usually 10 to 12 inches wide and are flared. Some console bowls are deeper than others, but they are usually not so deep as salad bowls. Console bowls were often flanked by matching candleholders, and if you see something called a console set, it would be the console bowl with two candleholders. Console bowls could be used to hold fruit or flowers, but were styled to have enough presence and size to look great empty as well.
The bowl in the picture at the top from Fostoria is the Baroque blank, with the Chintz etching. You can see that this is flared and quite fancy. It looks like it belongs on a table as a centerpiece. This particular bowl is referred to as a 12 inch flared round bowl. You might see these listed as console bowls, centerpiece bowls, or simply 12 inch round bowls.
One of my personal favorites is the rolled edge console bowl. Instead of flaring the rim to make a very wide, shallow opening, the rim gracefully arcs over to form a wide bowl with a much smaller opening. These bowls have looks! Usually the etching or design is on the rolled rim. Since the interior of the bowl is rolled to the outside, the design shows beautifully from any angle. These are meant to be fancy and are one of the signature pieces of the elegant era.
The green bowl is a classic shape console bowl also from Fostoria with the Vesper etch on the edge of the rolled rim. If you saw the profile you could see that the rim on this bowl does not roll fully over to touch the table top.
No comments:
Post a Comment