An extraordinary, highly architectural example of early 20th-century avant-garde metalwork.
This museum-quality regular dodecahedron faceted vase beautifully captures the historic transition where the Arts & Crafts movement evolved into radical European Modernism.
Exceptional Bench-Craft Construction Details
Unlike lightweight modern reproductions that are machine-stamped or spun, this heavy, substantive piece is a product of highly skilled bench craftsmanship:
Hand-Brazed Interior Seams: A view inside the main outer shell reveals prominent, manually brazed solder seams where each individual pentagonal panel was painstakingly hand-cut, puzzle-fitted, and joined.
Dual-Metal Removable Liner Sleeve: The vase comes complete with its original, heavy brass cylindrical insert featuring a solid copper base showing traditional hand-scraped scoring marks.
Historic Protective Treatment: The interior of the sleeve retains its original dark, century-old protective pitch/rosin waterproofing wash, displaying gorgeous natural degradation, lime/hard-water spots, and green verdigris blooms at the deepest seams.
Charming Artisan Imperfections: A pinprick light leak is visible along one internal solder seam—an honest testament to the immense difficulty of hand-soldering a mathematically perfect polyhedron. This exact sealing limitation is the historical reason why the master smith crafted a separate inner water sleeve.
Style & Attribution Notes:
The unadorned, hyper-minimalist polyhedral form strongly mirrors the radical geometric frameworks championed by the Vienna Secession (Wiener Werkstätte) and the German Werkbund between 1905 and 1920.
The mixed-metal metallurgy (combining an outer brass structure with a heavy, raw copper-based internal insert) closely aligns with documented workshop practices of premier German Jugendstil metalsmiths like Carl Deffner of Esslingen and high-end WMF (Württembergische Metallwarenfabrik) art-line commissions.
Such pieces were frequently produced without outward stamps to prioritize a "pure, clean craft" aesthetic for modernist interior architects.
• Excellent, antique condition. Slight wear with one very minor seam line dent. No structural damage or modern alterations. Exterior finish light polished with the interior patina left raw.
• Material: Heavy Solid Brass Shell & Insert; Solid Copper Insert Base.
• Weight: 879 grams (Substantive, heavy gauge sheet metal)
• Maximum Height: 16 cm
• Widest Diameter: 17 cm
• Panel Dimensions: Regular pentagons with 7 cm edges