Daum Nancy Square Vase With Dutch Landscape Design

Daum Nancy – Square Vase with Dutch Landscape Design

An elegant, quadrangular Daum Nancy vase made of glass, featuring a winter landscape design inspired by the landscapes of the Netherlands. The design extends across the various sides of the vase and evokes the Dutch countryside in winter, with its windmills, houses, and architectural silhouettes, as well as bare trees and expanses of water or snow.

The design combines several effects characteristic of Daum’s Art Nouveau-era production: the glass background has a frosted, opalescent appearance, giving the material the look of a landscape shrouded in mist and cold. The landscape elements are then highlighted by delicate engraving and painted highlights, while shades of yellow, brown, and orange provide subtle contrasts to the winter scene. The vase’s geometric shape, which is quite understated, deliberately contrasts with the picturesque and almost narrative character of the landscape.

“Dutch landscapes” are a well-documented theme in Daum Nancy’s work. A vase in the collections of the Musées de France, dated 1904–1914, depicts precisely such a Dutch landscape with windmills, a rowboat, cows, a village, and a bell tower, rendered on blown, double-walled, frosted glass that has been acid-etched and decorated in grisaille.  Other comparable examples date from around 1900–1910, featuring windmills, a snow-covered village, and a lakeside landscape.

Founded in Nancy in 1878 by Jean Daum, the factory gradually shifted from industrial glassmaking to the creation of true works of art. Under the leadership of his sons Auguste and Antonin Daum, the company developed a department dedicated to artistic pieces beginning in the 1890s and became one of the leading names of the École de Nancy, alongside Émile Gallé, among others. Daum received a Grand Prix at the 1900 Paris World’s Fair, cementing the manufacturer’s place among the leading houses of French art glass.

This vase is thus a quintessential example of this particularly creative period, when the glassmakers of Nancy explored the possibilities offered by acid etching, multilayered glass, frosted effects, powders, and painted decorations to transform the material into a veritable glass painting. The collections of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy today bear witness to the exceptional importance of this Daum production, with more than 900 pieces preserved.