Striking vintage mezze filigrano plate

Mezza filigrana means, literally, half filigree. It's a Murano style of glass design of fine, parallel, coloured threads between layers of crystal. Most filigrana features fine, delicate lines of filigree. This one is a classic spiral design, but the thickness and boldness of the colours are like nothing I've seen elsewhere. It's a fantastic design.

The whole piece is cased in clear crystal and is heavy for its size - just short of 2kg. Despite this, you can feel the humps from many of the individual strands of glass beneath the crystal. These individual strands are bright blue, pale aqua, bright green, and one single strand of milky blue. All the strands are opaque but you can see between each strand.

My guess is that each strand (all 37 of them) was a separate one-coloured cane, laid together on a clear glass base and worked into a spiral. That would explain why you can feel them separately. If I'm correct, it's very clever workmanship. If they did it some other way, it's still very clever.

This is another one we've kept for years in our private collection, firstly because it displayed so well, either flat on a coffee table or on stand, and secondly because we didn't know who made it or when. Usually we eventually work these things out, and anything particularly innovative and clever turns out to be from Czechoslovakia. This time we still know nothing more about it, but Czechoslovakia is probably a good guess. It's certainly not a common piece. I once saw another one the same in an auction, but the seller could shed no more light on its origins.

Length: 25cm (10 inches)
Width: 21cm
Height: 5cm
Weight: 1.9kg
Condition: some scratches on the flat, polished base, and 2 fleabites on the rim of the base

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Our Reference: 2999

US $350.00 + shipping

Approximate price in other currencies:

NZ $419	EUR €268	JP ¥30,729
AU $333	SEK 2,285	CHF 324
GB £218	CA $345	ZAR 3,008

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