Rago Auctions

Richard Charles Marquis, Dick to his friends, has long been regarded as one of the most influential figures in American Studio Glass, and his career goes back to the very nascence of the movement. His reputation in the art glass world, unrivaled and well-deserved, comes from his mastery of this ancient and challenging medium from which he created his original and playful forms; his impact on the lives of countless students and fellow artists he met through his years of teaching and residencies around the world; and his wicked sense of humor. Dick has been retired for several years now, and the pieces offered here stand as a testament to his inimitable capabilities as an artist.

His reputation in the art glass world, unrivaled and well-deserved, comes from his mastery of this ancient and challenging medium from which he created his original and playful forms...

Our relationship began in 1970 when he returned home from his Fulbright year in Venice, where he had been employed at the Venini factory. Dick and I lived, worked, and traveled together for most of the 70s. While he originally crafted both ceramics and glass, he soon turned his focus to glass entirely. The collection brought to you here has been with me in my house in Berkeley, California since those early years, and has great sentimental value to me.

The iconic glass teapots were born of his love for shape and color, as well as his delightful imagination. Their lids are fused so they are obviously not functional, and if you were to put boiling water in them, they would shatter. The teapots in this group were probably made in the late 70s. Similarly, the cups and bowls were studies in color and not meant to hold liquid, either. We displayed flowers in the striped orange vase.

The Lord’s Prayer was Dick’s hyper-technical approach to his Master of Fine Arts thesis at the University of California, Berkeley in 1971. The process required an enormous amount of work and skill, and took many days to complete. First, the letter and heart murrine were made, followed by the words. Then, the words were put into lines. Finally, the lines were grouped together surrounded by the hearts, and pulled out at each end to create a cane. Then pieces were cut from the cane to create the murrine. Dick had three pieces made into rings, one for me, offered here, and two more for each of his sisters.

Should you want to learn more about Dick and his art, there are three beautifully illustrated large-format books I would recommend you read: Richard Marquis Objects by Tina Oldknow (1997), The Way of the Artist: Reflections on Creativity and the Life, Home, Art, and Collections of Richard Marquis by Barry Behrstock M.D. (2007), and Richard Marquis (Keepers) by Vicki Halper (2019). The last book contains a great photograph of the Lord’s Prayer murrina and a description of its creation on pages 32 and 33.

His website, richardmarquis.com, also offers good information about him, his life, his work, and his collections, in just as irreverent and fun a tone as the man himself. “Propaganda” takes to you his résumé, and “Slide-o-Rama,” to an entertaining photo montage—one is a photo of Dick, me, and our beloved English setter Nigel next to our 1929 Model A Roadster pickup truck. Nigel features in several of Dick’s later pieces.

In 1972, Richard Marquis earned his M.A. degree with a thesis on the making of traditional Venetian murrine and other canework techniques. He based it on research about historic Venetian glass as well as his own thorough notes, taken during his Fulbright fellowship at Venini in 1969. For the accompanying exhibition to his thesis he made a zanfirico cup and two murrine: one an American flag and the other a tour de force featuring the Lord’s Prayer. Marquis was familiar with the tradition of the prayer in American pop culture and knew, thanks to Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, that it had been inscribed on the head of a pin.

His was an entirely novel approach to glassmaking in the United States and rightfully praised by many, including Therman Statom who noted that Marquis “was the first person to [absorb]...all that Italian glass technology and make something new with it…No one else had done that…he learned the technique, digested it, and made it something that was his.” Marquis’ murrine, which were cut from canes that could be stretched nearly to infinity, resulted in pieces so small that the prayer fits into a space smaller than that of a pinhead. He only made the prayer cane once so there are few extant examples, including one worn as a pendant by Lino Tagliapietra and several residing in the permanent collection of the Corning Museum of Glass.