Hi all,
Nice item indeed, NJK!
ironlord1963 made a point that should be taken to heart normally: never trust hand-written statements. In this here case we can disregard that as the background of the series plus the mold of the item as well as other existing examples clearly show that many items were indeed not marked with the normal Mehlem marks. Here's another one taken from the Weisser catalog issued for the Mehlem & Wessel exhibition in Bonn; it's from the same series and also without the stamped Mehlem marks. It is a 20 cm high vase coded "214 - 8656/a - 57" and shows 'Royal Bonn' plus (note!) 'Ars Nova' without 'Germany' in variation to your 'Art-Nova' plus 'Germany':
The reason for the change in procedure (or rather exception from the rule) for this series was that these items were made/decorated by real independent (read as: not employed by Mehlem) artists directly in the factory instead of the normal procedure which saw designers create templates or directly instructing normal employees. It was a reaction to the quick change in taste of the customers; it gave some artists a nice background and in turn the company was able to add some modern/hip items to its portfolio. Sadly, most of the artists were never heard of again. An exception may be A. Hofmann who later went on to work for the Wessel company and designed the largest part of their Art Nouveau / Jugenstil wall tile assortment.
But I'm trailing off again
NJK, your original question was about it's age. Note that both your item and the others from that series are all decorated in a way that some people would not call 'Art Nouveau' at all; but I think those would claim a difference between "Art Nouveau" and "Jugendstil" even if both are the same. However one should beware the folks which believe that any Art Nouveau item *has* to look like the designs of Victor Horta; the whole AN movement included thousands of artists worldwide and they all had their own personal impression of what 'made' Art Nouveau.
Nearly trailed off again ... dating the items is quite easy as the documentation on Mehlem series is pretty complete; the Art Nova series was created between 1897 and 1904 and I may add that items from that series are relatively hard to find so they are more desireable than items from the Flamand series for example. As for value, I have *no* idea as that's not my cup of tea - I am unable to work 'in numbers' and can only memorize mark images and company history, sorry.
Oh, and I grabbed the pics for my site, if you don't mind
