Emile Gallé Vase

A ground-up vase in double-glazed glass with a deep-engraved decoration of flowers and leaves in ochre-brown colors, partially glazed on the surface with blue powders, on an amber background speckled with interlayered powders and silver flakes.

Signature: Gallé in reserve in the decoration.

Dimensions:
H 12 cm D 9.5 cm

Emile Galle: French, (1846-1904)
"Art for art's sake" was the conviction of the famous French designer and glassmaker Émile Gallé. With his ethereal glass vases, other vessels, and lamps, which he adorned with botanical and religious motifs, Gallé advanced the ideology of Art Nouveau and led the modern renaissance of French glass. The son of a prosperous earthenware and furniture maker, Charles Gallé, he studied philosophy and botany before turning to glassmaking. The young Gallé's expertise in botany, however, would influence his design style and become his signature for generations to come. After learning the art of glassmaking, Gallé went to work in his father's factory in Nancy. He first created objects in clear glass, then began experimenting with layering highly colored glass. While glassmakers in Murin had applied layers of glass and color to decorative objects before Gallé, Gallé was always adventurous in his native northeastern France, taking advantage of flaws that materialized during his processes and etching natural forms such as insects like dragonflies, marine life, the sun, vines, fruits, and flowers modeled from local specimens. Gallé is also credited with reviving cameo glass, a style of glassmaking that originated in Rome ( ). He used cabochons, which were applied decorations of raised glass, colored with metallic oxides and made to resemble rich jewelry. Gallé's cameo glass vases and vessels were a great success at the 1878 Paris Exposition, cementing his position as a talented and pioneering designer. By the end of the 19th century, Gallé was pioneering breakthroughs in mass production and employed hundreds of artisans in his workshop. Botany and nature remained great sources of inspiration for the artist's glasswork—just as they had been for other Art Nouveau designers. From around 1890 to 1910, the movement's talented designers produced furniture, glass, and architecture shaped like—or adorned with—gently intertwined trees, flowers, and vines. But Gallé had many interests, such as Oriental art and ceramics. The Japanese collection he visited at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (then the South Kensington Museum) in the 1870s had also impressed him. Breaking free from the rigidity of Victorian traditions, Gallé breathed new life and spirit into the art and design of his time by creating exquisitely crafted glass vessels and pioneering new glassworking techniques.

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