'...does not exists so much information about Casimirs glasshouse in writing as could be expected. It was founded 1757 by Count Casimir Lewenhaupt (1711-1781) and was located in the county of Kalmar (which is east of Småland). The glasshouse was closed in 1811. The glasshouse produced a lot of engraved decanters (simple in style), which had the typical Schnaps-decanter-shape. Casimirsborgs glasbruk was very much inspired by the neoclassicistical style that came from France and England and started then to produce coneshaped decanters with geomertic patterns as your chessboard-pattern. This pattern is very typical for this specific glasshouse and was later imitated by Kosta Glashouse (among others), who produced two services with that pattern ("Junior" and Odelberg" early 20th century). There might be other glasshouses that imitated this pattern to (because at that time a patent on pattern did not exist) but the most famous glashouse is Casimirsborg.' AND '...thank you for sending the pictures of your very beautiful objects! Your glas and decanter look very authentic. It has the quadratic foot and the chessboard pattern with the stars, which are, as you already assumed, typical for Casimirsborgs glasshouse. Very beautiful!! Even the glass shows the signs of age which are typical for glass from the 18th century (there are
some bubbles and the glass has a special milkish-green colour).' AND '...With the expression "the typical Schnaps-decanter-shape" I mean the decanters which where produced at most swedish glasshouses in the 18th and 19th century and were called "schatullflaskor" ("decanters that fit into small boxes of transportation"). This decantershape was already produced as
early as in the 16th century but it was not so common then. It was also in the 16th century that Schnaps (in Scandinavia it is called Brännvin, which was imported from Europe and was first drunk from small bowls). There is a nice little danish book about that topic "Braendevin-en billedbog om Braendevin gennem tiderne" that tells us about the tradion of Schnaps and
how the glassdecanters came about and how they developed. I find that in all the books the measurement is referred to as grams (f.e 60-70 grams is one glass).' -- Maja Heuer, Curator, Smaland museum, Vaxjo Sweden (27 June & 1 August 2005) [in response to my emails regarding Steenberg's Smaland photographs on pages 48-50 of "pin-bottle" shaped decanter, and chessboard (Harlequin) decorated and plinth-footed wine glasses attributed to Kasimirsborg, also why my decanter has a flat-topped stopper and wine is of unusually large capacity at almost 4 ounces (100ml).] |
