Moser is a luxury glass
manufacturer based in the city
Karlovy Vary, in present day
Czech Republic, a city previously
known as Karlsbad in the north-
eastern part of the region of
Bohemia, in what was then the
Austro- Hungarian Empire. The
Moser company is well known for
manufacturing stemware,
decorative glassware, which is
among the most collected of the
20th and 21st century decorative
glass. From its humble origins as
a polishing and engraving
workshop, the company
developed into a lead-free glass
manufacturer lasting through for
the past 160 years. The original
company was founded in 1857 by
Ludwig Moser, as a simple glass
workshop initially concentrating
on polishing and engraving blank
glass pieces, on behalf of other
prestigious glass firms of the
time. The engravers followed long
established Bohemian design
themes with scenes of hunts,
stags and wooded landscapes,
which very much appealed to the
indigenous population of Bohemia.
It took the company a couple of
years to begin designing and
making its own art glass products.
Ludwig Moser was able to develop
a lead-free sodium-potassium
glass, which was not only
ecologically friendlier than the
lead glass employed by all other
manufacturers of the time, but
also happened to be extremely
hard and resistant, remaining
until this day the basis of the
Moser products. This fact
contributed to an increased
interest in the company’s
products. At the Vienna
International Exhibition of 1873
Ludwig Moser’s company was
already 15 years old and not only
well established but also
renowned and was awarded a
medal for merit, being also
appointed the exclusive supplier
of glass to his majesty the
Emperor Franz Joseph I. The
company would continue to obtain
numerous other awards in the
coming years, including medals at
the World Exhibitions in Paris in
1879, 1889 and 1900, and the
World Exhibition in Chicago in
1893. Ludwig Moser proved to be
not only a master glass-maker but
also a very astute business-man,
by taking over a glass factory in
the area Meierhofen bei Karlsbad
in 1893 as to create, together
with is two sons Gustav and
Rudolph, a huge glass-
manufacturing industry,
employing more than 400 people
under the name of
Karlsbaderglasindustrie
Gesellschaft Ludwig Moser &
Söhne. Moser opened also a
number of shops to sell his wares
in the affluent areas of Karlsbad
and then concentrated on the
various spa towns where the
waters attracted Europe’s
aristocracy. In 1904 Moser
received a warrant to supply the
Imperial Court of the Emperor of
Austria and in 1908 the company
became supplier to the English
king Edward VII. It was around
that period when the company
started using extensively the
motto “Moser, King of Glass, Glass
of Kings” as associated with its
famous royal clientele who, in
addition to Edward VII and the
Austrian Imperial Court, included
Pope Pius XI, Abdul Hamid II,
Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, the
king Luís I of Portugal and his
spouse, Maria Pia of Savoy. The
city of Karlovy Vary became
occupied by Nazi Germany in
1938 after the Munich Agreement
and the Moser family fled the
country during this anti- Semitic
period. During World War II the
Moser Glass manufacture was
taken over by the invading
German government and all the
workers you were jewish were
interned into concentration
camps. The glass workers who
were left were put to work for the
war effort and in a passive
retaliation they managed to create
for the tank windows flawed glass
that would shatter on impact.
After the war and because of its
international reputation, the
company was able to retain some
independence during the
communist era while the rest of
the Czech glass industry was
nationalised in 1948, being one of
15 companies granted a kind of
autonomy by the Communist
regime. Ludwig Moser was one of
the few Czechoslovakian
glassmakers to sign their pieces.
He realised quite early on that an
easily recognisable ‘trademark’
other than a signature could also
become quite important to
customers who wanted to show
off their Moser glass in a showy
yet discrete manner. Being
inspired by the forests of
Bohemia, he achieved this by
using applied glass acorns,
polychrome enamelled oak leaves,
enamelled bugs and applied
grapes. His other known
distinguishing features included
raised enamel birds. Moser was
also influenced by the European
art movements of the time and
produced designs inspired by
European Baroque works,
Japanese ceramics and Islamic
goldsmiths. He also created a
thick coloured glass as well as
molded clear glass with inclusions
of coloured glass. Moser vases
were often dark blue, purple and
amber and had patterns cut into
them in shallow relief. Moser
created also clear glassware with
purple or green glass carved into
cameos. This deeply carved glass
had extremely precise edges and
was beautifully decorated with
flowers and figures. Johann
Hoffman was one of the early
Moser designers. He often used
opaque purple or black glass to
create everything from goblets to
bookends and particularly enjoyed
the use of animal figures or
female nudes in his masterpieces.
In the years around 1890 the
Moser glass manufacture
introduced the use of gold leaf
pressed between two layers of
glass which were intricately
decorated with floral patterns and
flowers This complicated process
is known as “Zwischengoldglas”
and such glass pieces are signed
with the Moser hallmark. In the
20th Century Moser produced a
new range of glass called
Alexandrite. This unusual glass
was named after the stone
alexandrite with its most
distinctive property being that it
can change it’s colour according to
different lighting conditions. The
glass appears lilac in natural
sunlight or yellow artificial light
which imitates daylight, and
smokey blue in
fluorescent/halogen light. This is
due to the presence of
Neodymium oxide (Nd²O³) in the
glass, hence it is also known as
neodymium glass.
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