101 Pc, Belle Époque Gilt-Monogrammed Crystal Service, in the Manner of Baccarat

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A lavish turn-of-the-century crystal service of exceptional quality, hand-blown and wheel-engraved with a continuous beaded festoon border and finished with … Read more A lavish turn-of-the-century crystal service of exceptional quality, hand-blown and wheel-engraved with a continuous beaded festoon border and finished with fire-gilded rims, stoppers, and bases. Each piece carries an elaborate gilt cipher within an engraved cartouche tied by a ribbon; the intertwined initials appear to read A-M-C, with the terminal “C” rendered as the dominant family initial.
The set comprises an impressive variety for the grand table—highballs (10, 5.75 in.), smaller tumblers/rocks (7, 4.125 in.), finger or ice-cream bowls (13, 5 in. diam.), water goblets (9, 5.375 in.), cordials (3, 3.375 in.), champagne coupes or sorbet glasses (13, 4.25 in.), sherry glasses (13, 4.5 in.), green “vaseline” red-wine glasses (11, 4.5 in.; the glass fluoresces under UV owing to a trace uranium content typical of the Belle Époque), martini glasses (7, 4.25 in.), butter domes (2, 3.5 in. diam.), cranberry or ruby wines (5, 4.25 in.) and larger cranberry wines (6, 4.5 in.), together with two decanters with original stoppers (approx. 9.25 in. and 12.875 in. high). The clarity of the glassware, the precision of the wheel-cut beading, the evenness of the mercury-gilt bands, and the uniformity of the stoppers all point to a premier Parisian workshop—very much in the Baccarat idiom—dating to the late 19th or very early 20th century. See less