Villeroy & Boch Amethyst Cased Glass Vase, Optic-Moulded Lobes with a Scalloped Rim, Heavy Clear Casing over a Deep Amethyst Core, Acid-Etched Signature to the Base, Germany, c. 1970–1995

The Piece

A heavy cased glass vase in deep amethyst, signed on the base by one of the oldest manufacturing houses in Europe.

The form is a bellied baluster — wide and full through the body, drawn in to a short narrow neck, and finished with a scalloped rim that follows the lobes rather than cutting across them.

The whole body is optic-moulded in vertical lobes, and the lobes are the point. Where each flute folds, the coloured layer is thickest in cross-section and reads almost black. In the centre of each panel it is thinnest and reads bright amethyst. The result is a dark-to-light alternation running the whole way round that shifts as you move past it, and which no photograph fully catches.

The glass is cased: a coloured core under a thick clear skin. It is legible at the foot, where the ribs run nearly colourless and the amethyst deepens as it climbs into the body.

It has real weight in the hand. The casing is substantial rather than token, and the vase sits down on a surface with the heft that only thick glass has.

Signed on the underside in acid-etched script: Villeroy & Boch.

History & Provenance

Villeroy & Boch have been manufacturing since 1748, which makes the house older than the United States. They are best known for ceramics — the Mettlach wares are collected worldwide — but the glass and crystal side of the business has run alongside the pottery for generations, and this is a product of it.

Amethyst is the difficult colour, and that is the reason to want this one. Purple glass is struck with manganese, and the margin for error is narrow: too little and it goes grey, too much or the wrong furnace atmosphere and it turns muddy brown-violet. Green, by contrast, is what glass does on its own when there is iron in the sand — which is precisely why green glass has been everywhere for two thousand years and good amethyst has not.

Casing doubles the work again. A cased vessel is made by gathering one colour of glass over another and working the two as a single body, and they must expand and contract in step or the piece cracks as it cools. What the technique buys is depth: a solid-coloured vase is the same tone everywhere, while a cased one is dark in its folds and luminous in its faces. That is the effect here.

The optic mould is the third operation. A gather is blown into a ribbed mould to take the lobes, then withdrawn and blown out further, which stretches the ribs and softens them into the swelling shape they hold now. It is why the flutes run with the form rather than sitting on it as applied decoration.

Dated on the evidence available: the acid-etched script signature, the optic-moulded cased construction, and the form, measured against documented Villeroy & Boch optic-ribbed glass of the same idiom. c. 1970–1995. No model number, line name or paper label survives on the piece, and none is claimed.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

Most rooms need one dark object, and very few people own a good one.

A deep amethyst vase with weight to it is that object. It anchors a shelf of pale ceramics, breaks up a run of brass, and gives the eye somewhere to land on a console table that has gone flat. Against warm wood it is superb, and against white paint it reads almost as a silhouette.

It is at its best empty and lit. Put it where light crosses it — a window sill, a lamp beside it, a picture light above — and the lobes do their work: black in the folds, glowing plum in the faces, the whole thing changing as you walk past. A vase full of flowers hides all of that.

When you do want it working, the narrow neck is a genuine advantage. It holds a small number of stems upright without a frog or tape, which is the hard part of arranging flowers at home. Three or five stems of something tall, and nothing else required.

The weight matters more than it sounds. A heavy vase does not tip when a cat walks past, does not skate across a polished surface, and does not need to be babied on an open shelf. This is thick glass and it behaves like it.

And it carries a maker’s name that a buyer will recognise without being told. Villeroy & Boch has been in continuous manufacture since 1748; signed glass by a house that old is an easy thing to own and an easy thing to explain.

A note on care. Hand wash only, in warm water with a little dish soap, and dry it straight away with a soft cloth. Never put cased glass in a dishwasher: the heat cycle and the detergent together will etch the surface permanently, and a thick vessel with two glass layers is exactly the shape that resents sudden temperature change.

Never pour hot water into it, and do not fill it from a tap running hot. Thick cased glass has more thermal mass than it looks and cracks from the inside out.

If mineral film builds up inside from standing water, fill it with warm water and white vinegar and leave it overnight rather than reaching for anything abrasive. A bottle brush with a wire stem will score the interior and the scratches never come out.

Dry it thoroughly before it goes away. Water left in the bottom of a narrow-necked vase is what causes the permanent white bloom you see in old glass, and once the surface is etched there is no reversing it.