Clutha vase

Designer: Christopher Dresser

c. 1885

Blown glass

Minneapolis Institute of Art

The first modern industrial designer, Christopher Dresser worked with a number of different British manufacturers of furniture, metalwork, wallpaper, ceramics and glass to create well-designed yet mass produced objects. For the Scottish company James Couper and Sons he designed a line of hand-blown glass produced with industrial techniques. The line was called <i>Clutha, </i> meaning “cloudy” in Gaelic, by the London retailer Liberty’s. These deliberately bubbly and streaked glass vases and bottles were produced in a range of tertiary colors suitable to the mid and late nineteenth century British interior: greeny yellow, amber, lila