Perfume flask (unknown maker)
Eau de Cologne
circa mid-twentieth century (?)
Though this may seem to be a rather unremarkable (as well as dirty) object of interest, it is not in fact the object that holds the value - it is its label. What does it say of the flask? Small but clear, it features colours and shapes that, when used together, were once quite popular within the world-widespread Art Déco period. Many of the Wiener Werkstätte (the Arts and Crafts movement of Austria which fore-ran the universal bloom of Art Déco) artefacts showcase a similar button-blossom shape for flower heads, a style that was soon loosely adapted to bordering countries’ art forms as well. As seen here, the label’s three petalled heads follow an almost minimalist ‘look’, inspired if not indirectly from early Wiener Werkstätte works of art, and which seem to be adapted to a French taste. Each head is bulbous and ‘Viennese’ in that it sits heavily against the backdrop with nothing so much as a single circular line to denote its uplifted face; each head is also decorated with only a single dot or nose at its centre, this being another common Wiener Werkstätte feature of decoration; lastly, and especially in the case of the red blossom, two pairs of leafy ears sandwich the flower’s face - again, another feature stemming directly from the Viennese style of decoration. Considering these details, one must then take notice of the tiny purple and yellow petals, and indeed the yellow flower’s central swirl: these features are not at all Viennese, but more-so Parisian or of the further north, which in all suggests that this flask is a bearer of subtly-melded styles. What is more, the label’s condition is mint, the flask itself is glass and small and the original perfume is entirely gone, all of which points to the possibility that this bottle may actually be a recent afterthought of the ‘30s, having been made twenty, even thirty, years on - when size and quality still rivalled little in terms of precious perfume.
