Art Nouveau Ceramic Vase Austria Bronze Mount By E. Walhiss

Superb and elegant Art Nouveau vase with bronze frame. It rests on a finely chiseled bronze strapping decorated with foliage and volutes. The amphora-shaped vase has a handle in which is enclosed a young long-haired woman with a tunic. The set is in shades of bluish and golden in gradation. Marked below EW for Ernst Waliss at Turn in Austria, very slight chip on the right foot. It was around 1880 that the merchant Ernst Wahliss had established himself as the main Viennese retailer of porcelain and ceramics. He had been running a ceramics store in Vienna since 1863, whose rapid international success enabled him to open stores in major European cities like London and supply many European royal families with the highest quality ceramics. In 1894 Ernst Wahliss bought the Alfred Stellmacher factory in Turn-Teplitz, Bohemia (present-day Czech Republic), and began producing decorative ceramics under the name "Ernst Wahliss Kunst, Porzellan und Fayence Fabrik". After Ernst's death in 1900, his son Gerhard Martin Wahliss acquired the factory in 1907 and continued to create a variety of functional and decorative items in earthenware and porcelain. The Serapis-Wahliss line, introduced in 1911, was made of white earthenware and decorated with geometrically stylized natural shapes such as flowers and peacock feathers. Hand painted with richly colored enamels, these decorations at the time represented the avant-garde of Austrian ceramics. Designers like Karl Klaus, who had studied with Josef Hoffmann, brought rare delicacy and urban sophistication to Wahliss' aesthetic project. Superb object of charm and quality