Egermann: Faceted Butterfly

An enameled butterfly with colourful pink, yellow, blue & brown-striped wings - with green & yellow “eye-spots”- 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 once presumed to be from a French glassworks, more recent research points to the Friedrich Egermann workshop in Haida, North Bohemia.  Illustrated in “Classic Paperweights from Silesia/Bohemia” by Peter von Brackel; page 249).
Provenance: Jennie H. Sinclair collection.
The weight was bequeathed to the New York Historical Society; it still bears the original accession number: 1965.418 in red enamel. It was de-accessioned and sold as Lot 272 in Sotheby’s  Important Paperweights sale in New York in January 1995.