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Émile Gallé (1846-1904)

Vase in swamp landscape

Multilayer glass

Nineteenth

Signed in the decor: Gallé

H.28 - L.12 - P.11 cm

Lovely ovoid-shaped vase with narrow neck in multilayer glass with acid-free decoration of a marsh landscape depicting water lilies and aquatic plants arranged on several planes, brown to purple in color on a yellow background.

"My root is deep in the woods" Émile Gallé (1846-1904)

Émile Gallé was born May 4, 1846 in Nancy and died September 23, 1904 in the same city.

His father owns a refined crystal shop in Nancy and obtains an order for a service of engraved glasses for Napoleon III. It then becomes by the granting of a patent "Supplier of His Majesty the Emperor". During the Universal Exhibition of 1855, he received an honorable mention.

Émile Gallé, at the same time, is a student at the Lycée Impérial de Nancy. After his BA, he continued his studies in Weimar in mineralogy, music and German. After the war, the young Émile Gallé joined the father's company and created a ceramic decoration workshop there. His artistic creations, cups, vases and works of art are born from his multiple researches on glass. From 1877, he took over the management of the family business.

Passionate about botany, and following many trips to discover the most beautiful gardens in Italy and Switzerland, he publishes articles in the Bulletin of the Central Horticultural Society of Nancy, of which he is the secretary. Member of the Botanical Society of France, he is part of many juries at horticultural exhibitions. His passion and devotion for the Flora will be his inexhaustible source of inspiration.

A fervent botanist, he is also interested in wood in order to develop plinths for the enhancement of his vases.

In 1855, he added a cabinet-making factory to the family business to install numerous precision machines. Émile Gallé, famous as a glassmaker, also designs furniture of very high quality of execution, it is his specialized cabinetmakers who will manufacture them. His oldest creations are rococo style because fervent Lorrain, having always lived in Nancy, he will never forget the influence of his city at the time of Louis XV. However, its inlays will be innovative, either of Japanese inspiration or of botanical inspiration.

He obtained a silver medal at the Universal Exhibition of 1889 and in 1900 he received the Grand Prix for glassware and furniture, a triumph. Intense and verbose, he continued to participate in numerous exhibitions, and to deliver complete sets for keen amateurs.

These masterpieces are presented in many museums such as the Musée de l'Ecole de Nancy, the Decorative Arts and Orsay museums in Paris.

Émile Gallé died on September 23, 1904 of leukemia and his widow continued the family adventure until 1931.

EmileGallé (1846-1904), Vase with a marshland landscape, 19th century

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