Glass is touchstone of mid-mod decorating, offering portable color in every room. Apart from its purely aesthetic value, antique and vintage glassware is also an enormous collectible category. The varieties are endless and all, but for MidMod-ology we will focus on the most prominent, art glass.
So-called art glass debuted with the 20th century, its innovative non-linear designs and flowing colors a harbinger of things to come. Over the years, its popularity has ebbed and flowed but it has remained a collector's staple. The category includes big names like Durand and Tiffany along with countless smaller makers, in our case Richard Ritter. As with most categories, pricing is subject to condition, rarity and maker. Premium pieces can extend well into four figures.
Richard Ritter was born in Detroit, but grew up in the then rural Michigan town of Novi. In 1959 he studied at the Society of Arts and Crafts (later renamed the Center for Creative Studies) in Detroit, Michigan. As a professional glass artist in the late 1970s he was making Murrine vessels and paperweights. A commission from Joan Mondale, wife to then-Vice President Walter Mondale for dessert plates led Ritter to experiment with open platter forms containing murrini and lattacino.
Currently available in our shop: A Richard Ritter Murrine Glass book-matched plaque. Script signature of the artist "Richard O. Ritter" lower right, mounted on custom black stand. Plaque measures 5" x 5".
In 1980, Ritter purchased a small farm near Bakersville, North Carolina where he built a studio. During this period he experimented more with Millefiori; Millefiori is a glasswork technique which produces distinctive decorative patterns on glassware. The term millefiori is a combination of the Italian words "mille" (thousand) and "fiori" (flowers).
Currently available in our shop: A Richard Ritter Murrine Glass vase with space blue links adorned with millefiori clusters and settled over a frosted body. Script signature of the artist "Richard O. Ritter" within one of the blue links. Measures 4 1/3" high overall.
Apsley Pellatt in his book Curiosities of Glass Making was the first to use the term "millefiori", which appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1849; prior to that, the beads were called mosaic beads. While the use of this technique long precedes the term "millefiori", it is now most frequently associated with Murano glassware.
Since the late 1980s, the millefiori technique has been applied to polymer clay and other materials. As the polymer clay is quite pliable and does not need to be heated and reheated to fuse it, it is a much easier medium in which to produce millefiori patterns than glass.