Prancing Horse

For the National Exhibition (Landesausstellung) in Zurich held from May to October 1939, the Verreries de Saint-Prex created a new product: a prancing horse in black glass, sitting on an oval base and intended as a bookend. Its shape and manufacturing technique, press-moulded glass, set it apart from all the artistic items produced previously. At Saint-Prex, where it continued to be produced until the late 1950s, only the correspondence documenting its genesis has survived in the archives, but the metal mould has been found at the Dorf- und Glasmuseum Wauwil. The local glassworks had in fact been acquired by the Verreries de Saint-Prex group in 1959. During the 1960s, other prancing horses were made at this location, some even in green glass. The Vitromusée Romont owns four examples of these statues.

We can trace the various stages in the manufacture of the mould through the correspondence with the mould maker E. Frankauser of Paris, mentioned above. The initial meeting probably took place at the Paris Universal Exhibition in 1937, where the glassworks and the mould specialist were both exhibitors. Between 1938 and 1939, Frankhauser first sent wax and plaster models to Saint-Prex, followed by the final 94 kg steel mould.

Bookend statuettes were popular in the first half of the 20th century. The Baccarat factory, for example, offered a model in moulded colourless crystal, designed by Georges Chevalier in 1925. Paul Ami Bonifas, who worked closely with the Verreries de Saint-Prex as a designer of artistic models from 1931 onwards, also created ceramic sculptures – including sailboats, sparrows and owls – often available in pairs.

The prancing horse motif, common since antiquity, was in vogue in Zurich in 1930. The “Manessebrunnen”, a fountain installed in the same year near the Kunsthaus, is crowned by such a statue. An iconography referencing current artistic events in Zurich therefore created a link with the National Exhibition held in the same city.