SCHNEIDER, CHARLES

Charles and Ernest Schneider (French, Early 20th Century) The Schneider brothers were a generation younger than Emile Galle and the Daum brothers, whose glassworks were in the same area of France. The Schneider brothers worked for Daum from the early 1900s, Ernest as a salesman/commercial manager, and Charles as a freelance designer.

The brothers left Daum around 1912, and recommissioned an old glassworks under the name Schneider Freres et Wolff (Schneider Brothers and Wolff), a few miles north of Paris in 1913. Henri Wolff was an architect friend of Charles Schneider.

Initially, they made high quality cameo vases and lamps, but the war in Europe (1914-1918) led Charles and Ernest and most of their skilled glassworkers away to fight in the war. They returned and re-opened their glassworks in 1917 to make glassware needed for hospitals, and after the war, they sold shares in the company to finance getting back into the art glass market. At that time the company was called the Societe Anonyme des Verreries Schneider.

Charles Schneider was a brilliant and versatile designer, and the company produced a wide range of superb designs of vases, ewers, bowls, and lamps. They were very successful in marketing their glass to major high prestige retail stores both in Paris and overseas. They bought back their shares and re-named the company Verrerie Schneider.

Virtually all their pieces are marked with the name SCHNEIDER or with one of their other trademarks, which include “CHARDER” (an amalgam of CHAR from Charles and DER from Schneider), “Le Verre Francais”, a two handled ewer sketch, and a piece of blue, white and red glass cane.