Ornamental vase with vine shoots

In autumn 1897, all of the various studios of the Zsolnay company of Pécs started preparing for the 1900 Paris World’s Fair, coming up with completely new forms, ornamentation and technical features. This vase is one of the results of that work, a striking example of the poetic decorative art produced in the new style. After its showing at the Paris exposition, the National Hungarian Applied Arts Society presented it to the Museum of Applied Arts.
Stretching up the tall form of the vase is a design whose subtle colour effects evoke the mood of a night stroll trough a vine grove. Dark, bluish-green lights form the background of the translucent, shimmering copper-red raised stalks and leaves. The reduction-fired metal lustre glaze marketed as "eosin" formed the basis of a completely new style, the outcome of decades of tireless experimentation by Vilmos Zsolnay – who had died before the exhibition opened – and the organizational work of his son Miklós.