ITEM SOLD
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Stock Number
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: 8166
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Circa
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: 1890
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Price : $845.00
Small Galle acid etched cameo glass vase in shades of mauve with floral decoration.
Emile Gallé (1846 – 1904) was and is the dominant figure in French cameo glass and was perhaps the most outstanding person working in glass in the Art Nouveau period. He was student and teacher, worker and director, craftsman and artist. He demonstrated fine skills as botanist, chemist, author, and businessman in addition to those shown in his work with ceramics, furniture, and glass.
His father, who owned a local glass and faience factory, inspired Galle to enter the glass industry. This sparked his interest in glass as a medium for artistic expression.
He began working for the Burgun, Schverer glass company in Meisenthal before establishing his own company in 1873. While he found experimenting with classical and enameled designs interesting, his aspirations were dramatically expanded when seeing the International Exhibition in Paris in 1878. There, he was exposed in particular to the cameo glass of Joseph Locke and John Northwood from England and Eugene Rousseau in pate de verre. Galle was about to combine his love of nature, his chemical training, and his artistic eye to the worlds of cameo glass, caramics, marquetry, and beyond.
Galle opened a small woodworkers shop in 1885 where he began experimenting in marquetry designs in furniture, and he continued working at his father’s factory. In 1889, Emile Galle displayed his new glass creations at the Paris International Exhibition, designs and colors not previously seen and causing an immediate sensation.
At the 1900 International Exhibition in Paris, Gallé had an outstanding exhibit with many fine pieces of glass and with a working glass furnace in the centre of the display He was highly acclaimed, and this experience was probably the high point of his career. Galle was honoured as the head of the Ecole de Nancy (School of Nancy). Membership in this ‘school’ consisted of a number of men who had achieved prominence in their particular fields, including: Hesteaux, a potter; the Daum brothers, manufacturers of fine glass.
Galle cameo glass was both wheel cut and acid etched, both techniques which required fine craftsmanship to produce and in which layers of multi-colored glass is progressively removed to create the designs.
