■ GOBLET-FORM VASE IN LIGHT BLUE OPALINE GLASS, probably Italian, twentieth century, in the Murano opaline tradition, the urn-form body hand-blown in semi-opaque light blue opaline and flaring from a gently waisted lower section to a broad everted rim, raised on a short cylindrical stem and shallow disc foot, the whole hot-assembled in the classical goblet vase silhouette that recurs across the Murano and Empoli opaline production of the twentieth century. The characteristic internal glow of opaline glass - the semi-opaque, milky transmission of light through a glass body clouded with bone ash or tin oxide - is developed evenly through the walls; the piece is unsigned and unmarked and catalogued as Italian, twentieth century, in the Murano manner, without further attribution.
Good condition consistent with age and use, without chips, cracks or repair. Height approximately 25 cm (9 ⅞ inches); diameter at rim approximately 13.5 cm (5 ⅜ inches).
Opaline glass was developed in the French and Bohemian glassworks of the early nineteenth century and was adopted on Murano from the later nineteenth century onward as a material particularly suited to the island's tradition of elegant table and display glass. Through the twentieth century, opaline production continued in parallel across Murano and the Tuscan glassworks of Empoli, the two traditions developing in conversation and producing unsigned domestic and decorative wares that are rarely traceable to a specific furnace. The present vase belongs to this broader Italian opaline corpus.