When glass collectors hear the name Ingrid, they know they are in for a treasure or a controversy. Treasure because Ingrid items are sculpturally elegant. Controversy because they have been falsely labeled as Lalique or Moser. Some have also been reproduced.

Ingrid is the name of a series of artistic pressed glass items made by Henry Schlevogt and named for his daughter. Henry was the son of Curt Schlevogt, who around 1900 founded a firm in Jablonec, Bohemia, to produce glass beads and buttons. His wife, Charlotte, was the daughter of Heinrich Hoffmann, the owner of a glass company that made and exported sculptures, beads and hollow-ware.

Henry began his career as a trade representative for A. Sachse & Co., first in Venice and later in New York City. From 1927 to 1930, he worked in his father-in-law’s firm where he was involved in the development of new products, including glass sculptures in the style that Lalique was making popular. When Charlotte died shortly after giving birth to a daughter they named Ingrid, he decided to move into his father’s firm.

But Henry knew that the “beads and buttons” business was a difficult one – too much competition from the multitude of firms in the area, from other countries, and from materials other than glass. And this was the time of the Great Depression. He knew he had to find something unique that customers could and would buy from him alone. In a letter to his daughter written in 1945, Henry explained that his experience in other countries guided him to create items that hadn’t been made before and to make them in such a beautiful material that the price wouldn’t matter.

At the Spring Trade Fair in Leipzig in 1934, the Schlevogt firm introduced a line of ornamental crystal sculptures, and the same year presented the line at the Chicago World’s Fair. The Ingrid brand was born. It was well received and Schlevogt began producing it on a large scale.

Schlevogt wrote: “I told myself that artists used marble for their sculptures; we should make marble out of glass. And we should get the designs for this marble-glass from sculptors.” He reached out to designers working with the Wiener Werkstätte (including Franz Hagenauer, Ena Rottenberg, and Vally Wieselthier) and to designers who worked for other major glass firms, such as Bruno Mauder (Moser), Eleon(or) von Rommel (Lobmeyr), and Alexander Pfohl (Josephinenhütte and the Glass School in Nový Bor). The result was a complete line of ornamental sculptures, perfumes with figural daubers and/or impressed stoppers, liquor sets, toilet sets, devotional items, figurines, table ware and vases.

The technology existed at the Riedel glassworks in Polubný, Czech-Republic, for making this artistic, marbled, pressed glass. Just because the shape was pressed, did not mean that it was of inferior quality – the glass was pure and there was plenty of hand-work to finish the items. Workers ground out the mold marks and frosted or polished the surfaces. They even engraved some of the details.

Most readily identifiable of Schlevogt’s items are those made of jade (green) and lapis (blue) marbled glass. Collectors have access to Ingrid catalogs from the 1930s online (pressglas-korrespondenz.de) and at the Corning Museum of Glass. The 1939 catalog shows more than 200 crystal and another 80 jade/lapis items. Collectors need to be cautious, however, since the molds have been used continuously. In addition, unauthorized versions of Ingrid items have been made from reverse-engineered molds.

Schlevogt’s crystal perfumes are not as easily identified. Some appear in the firm’s catalogs, but the vast majority must be lumped into the broad category of Czechoslovakian until further information becomes available. The designs for perfumes included bottles in various Art Deco shapes, and stoppers with relief-pressed nudes, couples, flowers, butterflies, and much more.

At times, it can be difficult to distinguish between items made by the Hoffmann and Schlevogt firms. They both used the same designers and had their glass pressed at the Riedel factory; Henry Schlevogt had started to develop some of his ideas while he worked at the Hoffmann firm; Schlevogt took ownership of some of the molds he had worked on at the Hoffmann firm. While Hoffmann is known for his butterfly mark, Schlevogt included items with the Hoffmann butterfly mark in his catalogs.

By 1936, Schlevogt had business representatives in the major European cities. When the Czechoslovak pavilion won a Grand Prize at the 1937 Paris World’s Fair, Schlevogt’s ornamental sculptures by Ena Rottenberg (Nude) and Josef Bernhard (Mask) were part of the reason. By 1940, the Schlevogt firm owned more than 1,300 glass molds, coin molds and hand presses. It had its own cutting, sand-blasting, and acid-etching workshops; it continued to have the glass shapes pressed at the Riedel firm. Henry Schlevogt had achieved his goal of creating a successful business enterprise.

The Czechoslovak government nationalized the glass industry after World War II and sentenced Henry Schlevogt to prison in Siberia. A national administrator, Eduard Dressler, took over business operations. Schlevogt was released in 1948, but banished. He first went to Austria; then accepted an offer to manage the glassworks in Romilly-sur-Andelle, France. He sold this firm in 1972 and died in Paris in 1984. Ingrid Schlevogt still lives in Paris.

The former Riedel factory in Czechoslovakia went through administrative changes imposed by the government. The Ingrid molds located at the factory continued to be used. New colors were introduced, including yellow, amethyst, pale blue, and pale green (these were not marbled). Interestingly, during the rebuilding years of the 1940s and early 1950s, raw materials for glassmaking were inconsistent in quality. The result was some “rare” colors because quality standards could not be maintained.

In 1990, the Czech government started the processes of restitution and privatization. The centralized glass industry was divided into smaller units and sold. In 1993, Ornela Co., Ltd. bought some of the units that had formerly belonged to Riedel; this included the Ingrid molds located at the Riedel factory. Production of Ingrid items continues today at the factory in Desná. [See www.desna-glass.cz.] The firm sandblasts “Desná” on its current production.

To address the difficulties in identifying and dating Ingrid glass, some collectors and researchers are currently working to produce an authoritative book. If you are interested in being part of this research effort, contact Truitt through AntiqueWeek.