Drapery Variant - A Eureka Moment (originally published back in 2005!)

For a number of years I (Glen) had had a "gut feeling" about the Drapery Variant pattern.

Here's what my issue was . . . although a tumbler is shown in the Riihimaki catalogue, there was something that didn't quite fit, and I didn't think that it was made by Riihimaki. I had been like a dog with a tasty bone, I simply couldn't let go of the feeling that it wasn't made by Riihimaki.

Circumstantial evidence had been mounting:

- it was unusual to find Riihimaki Carnival in the UK, but there was a lot of Carnival from Czechoslovakia, and later, in the 1950s, a lot of clear crystal Drapery Variant tumblers from Czechoslovakia were sold in the UK (most homes had a set of them);

- the mirror shiny ground base and the shimmering peacock iridescence found on Drapery Variant pieces were very characteristic of Inwald. Riihimaki did not typically make decanter sets, whereas Inwald certainly did;

- there was a catalogue from Cristalerias Piccardo (Argentina) which included imported glass. Drapery Variant was shown and actually named "Checo", clearly implying the source to be Czechoslovakia;

- a couple of Drapery Variant tumblers surfaced with an unusual color finish - a colored flashing contrasted with crystal. Not at all typical of Riihimaki's glass, yet very typical of Czech decorative techniques.

So, although we thought that it may not have been made by Riihimaki, we did not have absolute proof for a definite attribution.

Then in 2005, thanks to Siegmar Gieselberger and Herr Neumann, some Markhbeinn catalogues surfaced. Markhbeinn was a glass wholesaler and distributer, not a glass maker. In these catalogues, we see a range of shapes in the Drapery Variant pattern, alongside known Inwald patterns such as Jacobean, Nola and Double Diamond.

Eureka! The circumstantial evidence was backed up by a prime catalogue source - Drapery Variant was made in Carnival by Josef Inwald of Czechoslovakia. It was originally called "Lido".

The Markhbeinn (Inwald) inventory includes a wide range of shapes in the pattern - but the best thing of all is that they list them in irise(iridised - that is, Carnival). Proof.

For much more information, see our Expanded and Revised Second Edition of the Magic and the Mystery 

Also in the Markhbeinn (Inwald) pages there was another illustration that solved another mystery - the maker of the splendid Provence pattern (known in Carnival in a pitcher and tumbler). We had always suspected it was Czech - and now we knew it was Josef Inwald. See the Provence Collectors' Facts sheet here