In 1891 the brothers August (1853 - 1909) and Antonin (1864 - 1931) Daum opened a decoration studio at the glassworks that their father had purchased in 1878. In contrast to the fine tablewares in traditional styles that the factory was then producing, the brothers took up the new, naturalistic, Art Nouveau style. Inexperienced and hampered by the limited facilities, they initially produced artistic wares derived from the work of other glassmakers. The new wares were first exhibited at the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, where Daum launched a new form that was to become a specialty of the firm--the elegant long-necked bottle such as this, known as a berluze. The form seems to have been inspired by Syrian and Egyptian glass vessels of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, although in its exaggerated elongation it also relates to Iranian glass of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The name berluze, invented by the Daums, evokes a distant Near Eastern prototype, and the acid-granulated surface of this example creates the effect of a patina similar to that of ancient glass.

The triumph of the Daums came at the Paris exposition of 1900 where exotic works like the berluze were displayed together with the firm's characteristic Art Nouveau glasswares and sometimes decorated like them with opulent floral ornaments. The firm's display won a gold metal, its collaborators were awarded many prizes, and Antonin Daum himself was named chevalier of the Legion of Honor. Kathryn B. Hiesinger, from Guides to European Decorative Arts: Styles, 1850-1900 (1984), p. 42.