Designer: Louis W. Rice (1872 – 1933)

Item: Shadow Ardt Silver Flask

Manufactured by: Apollo Studios, a division of Bernard Rice’s Sons

Country of origin: United States

Year made: 1928

Materials: Patinated silverplate over brass

Dimensions: 8 ½” x 4 ½” x ¾”

Condition: Very good with some very minor dings and scratches. The patination is fading in the upper triangle likely from polishing. Most of the (very few) Shadowardt pieces we have seen have lost all their patination so this one is a real survivor. Remarkably, the original cork is still inside the screw down cap.

Description: Here is a very rare Shadow Ardt oversized silver flask manufactured by Apollo Studios a Division of Bernard Rice’s Sons in New York City. The Shadow Ardt line of holloware appears to have been designed as a modernist design companion to Rice’s more famous Sky-Scraper line introduced that same year. According to the Brooklyn Museum website, Louis Rice, who also designed the Sky-Scraper line was the designer of this line of holloware.

Jewel Stern in her book (see References) suggests that the Shadow Ardt line was designed in reaction to Erik Magnusssen’s Cubic service for Gorham, at a much lower price. Rice used patination and gilding to create the appearance of a faceted surface, like that on the Magnusssen’s Cubic service without the expense of actually manufacturing. An example of this flask can be found in the Wolfsonian Museum Collection, and other Shadow Ardt objects can be found in several other important museum collections, including the Brooklyn Museum, the Yale University Art Gallery and the Dallas Museum of Art.

References: Jewel, Modernism in American Silver: 20^th Century Design, Yale Stern University Press( 2005) pages 71, 73 and 369; Gordon, John Steward A Modern World: American Design from the Yale University Art Gallery 1920 – 1950, Yale University Press (2011).