Instruments - Clocks - Vienna Regulators

These popular clocks of the last quarter of the nineteenth century were neither regulators nor always from Vienna. True regulators are clocks designed to achieve the highest possible precision. Vienna "regulators" give the appearance of being precise because they have a second hand. However, because of their short pendulum, the second hand rotates in 45 seconds and is purely for decoration. "Vienna" regulators, which were made in Germany and America as well as Austria, had a rectangular case of polished wood with glass at the front and sides. The top and bottom of the case was finished with ornate turned and carved timber and often a figure, such as an eagle at the top. German "Vienna Regulator"

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Glass - European - Austrian (Jugenstil)

In the late 19th century, when the Art Nouveau movement was sweeping France, Britain and America, a similar movement known as Jugedstil (literally "youth style") swept Germany and Austria. Its most brilliant flowering was in the Austrian glass design between about 1870 and 1900.

Reacting against what were seen as stereotyped designs in Bohemian glass, Jugendstil craftsmen experimented with the nature of glass - particularly its malleability when heated and its translucent properties.

 Loetz vase

Loetz shell (1898) A number of techniques were used to create original works of art. These included the iridescence produced by coating the glass with a metal oxide and heating it in a furnace, cased glass made with two or more layers of differently coloured glass, cameo glass made by cutting or etching cased glass and combed glass in which threads of molten coloured glass are dragged across the surface to produce a marbled effect.

The best known of the Austrian glassworks is Loetz, which is noted for its iridescent glassware, particularly that produced in the 1890s, and J & L Lobmeyer, which pioneered the commercial production of iridescent glass in the 1860s.

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