An unusual side view of an enameled butterfly. Its colourful pink, yellow, blue and brown striped wings - with green & yellow “eye-spots”- are underlaid with opaque white. Set in clear glass, cut with a circular top window, 6 round side facets plus a row of 6 smaller oval facets near the base (possibly a later addition!). Wide flat basal rim, polished central concavity.
Although originally presumed to be from a French glassworks, more recent research points to a Bohemian attribution - possibly the workshop of Friedrich Egermann in Haida.
(See illustration page 249 in “Classic Paperweights from Silesia/Bohemia” by Peter von Brackel).
Provenance: The Jennie H. Sinclair (1869-1965) collection.
The paperweight was bequeathed to the New York Historical Society and still bears the original accession number - 1965.418 - in red enamel.
Sotheby’s, New York: Important Paperweights, 18th January 1995, Lot 272