Bohemian/Czech Schlevogt Glassworks Violet Art Deco "Ingrid" Vase. Stylized figures on sides, with vase body pressed into the mold with compressed air (the pressing process took place at the Riedel glassworks in Polaun), the surface ball-shaped, ground, and polished to a matte and glossy finish. Unmarked, indicating it is one of the earlier pieces from the 1930s. 

Size: 7 x 7 x 9 1/2 in. 

Curt Schlevogt was born in the United States in 1869, the son of Jewish immigrants. By the turn of the century he was a successful entrepreneur who visited his ancestral home and discovered the glassmaking hub of Bohemia. He set up a workshop in Jablonec to produce glass beads and buttons, where he met and fell in love with the daughter of his partner, Heinrich Hoffmann. His son Henry was born in 1904 and joined the family business before he was ten, first working in the cold shop and eventually becoming one of their chief designers. Curt became one of the largest exporters of Jablonec pearls by 1928, which led him to expand his lines exponentially. Schlevogt Glassworks began producing beautiful art deco pieces in the early 1930s, with their most famous line known as “Ingrid,” named after Henry’s daughter. It debuted at the 1934 Spring Fair in Leipzig, quickly selling out and eventually including toiletries, sculptures, lamps, liquor sets, and much more. They won a Grand Prix at the 1937 World Exhibition in Paris, and their success led them to collaborate frequently with the Josef Riedl Glassworks in Polubny, where many of their molds were saved and rediscovered decades later. Tragically the horrors of World War II took their toll on the company, with Hoffmann dying in a concentration camp in 1938 and the Schlevogts fleeing the country. They returned in 1944 to attempt to revive the business in the aftermath of the war, but the company was nationalized under the Soviet Union. Curt had returned to the United States to help reorganize exportation and remained there, where he died in Chicago in 1959. His son Henry, however, had been captured by the Red Army when the glassworks was confiscated, and was almost deported to Siberia before a joint effort by his father and several French friends were able to convince them he had also been born in the United States and should be extradited. He and his wife eventually escaped to France with fake Austrian passports, and he opened a wholesale glassware trade business on rue de Paradis in Paris in the 1950s, frequently working for major manufacturers throughout Europe until his own death there in 1984. Today the pieces of both father and son are highly sought after, and are considered very collectible pinnacles of the 1930s styles due to their relatively brief period of existence.