About Baccarat   de

The Baccarat Trademark

link-baccarat02The trademark –wineglass,  carafe and goblet and the name of the company in capital letters within a circle – was registered in October 1860 in Paris (Sautot, p. 47f). Right after the introduction of the German laws protecting trademarks, in 1875, the trademark was registered in Germany. (Renewed in 1894.) As the "General Observations" in the 1893 catalogue say, all Baccarat products bore a label with the trademark. Not before the 1920's did Baccarat begin to mark its products with an etched sign, first perfume bottles only, since 1936 all the other glassware.

Baccarat-Marque-102There is, however, another "trademark" which has been applied to pressed glass only since the 1870's. "BACCARAT" and "DÉPOSÉ" have been pressed in relief onto the glass article. The same method of marking pressed glassware  can be found in St. Louis, Portieux and Vallérysthal, Bayel and , in Belgium, Val St. Lambert. (All of them,  with the exception of Vallérysthal, had another, "regular" trademark for their blown glassware.)

Strangely enough, Sautot does not mention a date of registration, and Baccarat itself refers only to the application of the label "on all Baccarat products" in its 1893 catalogue. Most likely, the pressed mark is no trademark at all, but a sign indicating that the design has been registered for protection. "Déposé" then  is the important word, similar to the German "Ges [etzlich]. gesch [ützt]" or "Musterschutz" which appear on German pressed articles occasionally. Perhaps the French laws concerning the protection of designs were comparable to the British ones in so far as protection was only guaranteed if the object was visibly and durably marked (hence the registration lozenge or the numbered mark on most British pressed glass articles). German and Austrian laws emphasized depositing and registration, and reference to design protection is normally found in catalogues only.

The reason why Baccarat (and possibly St. Louis as well) introduced this manner of marking in the 1870's is unknown to me. French laws protecting designs had been in existence much longer and were much older than British ("Designs Act", 1842), Austrian   ( since1859) or German laws (since 1876). (German design protecting laws, by the way, were stipulated by former French textile manufacturers who after the annexion of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany in 1871 had become German.)

 

© Copyright 2001-2009 Simon Becker.  All rights reserved. Last update 01/10/09.