MUSEUM ITEM art nouveau GALLE MINIATURE VASE 1900 RARE

Émile Gallé was born in 1846 in Nancy. He made his secondary studies in Nancy. He obtained his A-levels and studied mineralogy in Germany.

He descended from a commercial family of earthenware and crystal were he helped in his father's glass company as soon as 1867. And replaced him in 1877 as director. In 1885, he founded a wood workshop and in 1894, a crystal firm in Nancy.

In advance on his time, he mixed a lot of influences but always created something new and different, something mysterious that belongs to him. Among the influences we can found in his work, I have to stress on literature and nature. Most of his vases have a poetical sentence carved or sealed in them, which is related to the object design or owner. Adapting his work to the personality of the owner is a common feature for AN artists. Nature that he knew well, collecting and studying plants at his free time, the four works presented in this page are inspired by nature : vegetables like ferns or ombelles and animals (mostly insects) like cicada and dragonfly.

He liked to play with the nature of the materials he uses. He took care of the material quality and worked on new techniques. He liked to play on the transparency of the glass and to create new visual or sensitive effects. He patented several new processes for glass work. 

He became famous at the 1889 universal exhibition in Paris when he won a "grand prix". This exhibition did not satisfied him anyway. He thought that this exhibition was not really looking to the future. He compared it to a general antique shop. His work was spread over 5 places all over the exhibition. He knew that he could not stay alone with the increasing concurrence of Germany and the US. In 1901, he created the école de Nancy in order to gather a critical size (both workers skills and fashion style) to resist to Paris and German influences. This school gathered artists, industrialists and teachers. Gallé wanted industry to play the major role in this association.