Bimini Martini Cocktail Glasses With Animals- Set of Four, Circa 1925-35

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Bimini Martini Cocktail Glasses with Animals- Set of Four,
Circa 1925-35

The Bimini footed cocktail glasses have two central "bubbles". … Read more Bimini Martini Cocktail Glasses with Animals- Set of Four,
Circa 1925-35

The Bimini footed cocktail glasses have two central "bubbles". The lower one is of a teardrop shape and is hollow with the outside studded (prunts) like 17th-century glass to help hold it. Above is a globe-shaped bubble with a different animal within. The top is a conical-shaped martini glass with orange and white swirls. The animals include a horse, a wild cat, a dog, and a bear.

Dimensions: 7 1/2 inches high x 3 1/4 inches wide

BIMINI

Bimini and Orplid were linked by one man, a poet, artist, and dreamer, a man of ideas but with a streak of practicality, enough to run successive businesses for over thirty years. That man was Fritz Lampl, an Austrian, born in Vienna in 1892 and was brought up in a suburb of that city.

Fritz visited an exhibition in Berlin which included fantasy shapes in blown glass by Marianne von Allesch. He described these as "poetry materialised" and decided that he too would make "frozen poetry" in glass.

Bimini

In 1923 Fritz Lampl rented a basement, employed an out-of-work industrial glassblower, and invited his brother-in-law, Joseph Berger, to design fantasy shapes and sit beside the glassblower working together to convert the designs into glass. They worked with glass tubes of different diameters and colors, some of them striped.

We learned quickly from each other and soon fantastic animals, vases and figures emerged, which the glass blower then multiplied on his own. Fritz soon took my place as the designer and other artists were attracted by the fascinating game.

The name Lampl chose for his company, Bimini, is from a poem by Heinrich Heine about a fictional island called Bimini.

Output from the workshop was varied and extensive. The Bimini glass figurines are so beautiful they are like frozen moments in glass, or as they were described by Lampl "frozen poetry".

Many Bimini figurines use only one colour, and rarely more than two. There is a correctness in anatomy and posture; they are abstract and lack detailed features. But always they convey a feeling, an emotion, and movement.
Coloured glass animals were also popular, as were the many designs of glasses, vases, and even glass cacti in ceramic flowerpots!

Joseph and Artur Berger were active in the firm both as designers of actual glass objects, which were then realised by the craftsmen, and as designers of the Bimini showrooms, display cabinets and even notepaper.

Joseph Berger, who wrote an account of Bimini and Orplid shortly before his death in 1989, maintained that he and his brother acted as a restraint to some of the more kitsch and sentimental aspects of the glass. Joseph was a student of the famous Modernist architect Adolf Loos.

Distinguishing features of Bimini, on the whole, were the delicacy of the lamp blown glass and the elegant design. Many of the items featured swirling patterns, either in white or coloured glass, somewhat in the Venetian latticino style.

The success of the firm was considerable, gaining a number of prizes at a Paris exhibition of 1925 and exhibiting throughout Europe and the USA. In Vienna the Bimini showrooms were set up in Stubenring, a fashionable address near the Museum of Arts and Crafts. Their glass became collectors’ items and they were very popular.

(Ref: NY10770-kmrx) See less