Pallme-König & Habel Art Glass Inkwell

Glass inkwell with bronze mount.

As described by the Cleveland Museum of Art:  The name Pallmé is traced all the way back to 1680, the second name, König being added around 1778. Palme means “palm-tree” which, together with “König,” refers to a particular variety called “palma real” or “royal-palm” in Spanish. In 1888, Josef and Theodor Pallme-König named a new glasshouse after their mother: Elizabethhütte. “Elizabethhütte” (or Glasfabrik Elizabeth) is used as part of the substantiated nomenclature, and “Pallme-König” is its popular translation, since both names cover the same production. In or around 1900, Wilhelm Habel, co-owner of the glassworks, obtained “a patent for a process to produce surface-decorated glass, a special type of decoration with glass threads encircling the vase”. Reviewing Pallmé-König pieces, one comes to differentiate between merely threaded and “veined” glass. The first rests lightly on the vessel’s surface, usually having been applied in a concentric, regular fashion, and can easily break off. The second is applied in more of a free-form, irregular style, fused deeply into the surface and is more resistant to breakage. Threaded glass was common to practically all Bohemian manufacturers – Loetz, Kralik, Rindskopf and Poschinger among them -, so its presence alone cannot be used to determine provenance. Other structural factors must be accounted for such as shape, the treatment of glass mass, and the way threading is applied. Just as the presence of metallic spotting does not constitute evidence of Loetz manufacture, the presence of threading alone does not constitute evidence of Pallme-König. As to threading, the manner it is applied constitutes, more than anything, the signature of a given manufacturer.