ÉMILE GALLÉ (Nancy, France, 1846 - 1904).
Vase, ca. 1920.
Acid-etched cameo glass.
Signed on the reverse.
Procedure: Private Collection, Spain between 1970-1990.
Measurements: 13 x 8 x 6 cm.
Acid-etched cameo glass vase, with an ovoid body and curved mouth. It is decorated with floral decoration that is freely arranged on the surface, as is typical of Gallé cameo glass. It is composed of two layers of glass, yellow, white and green in colour, cut at different levels to create tonal variations and details that add three-dimensionality to the flowers.
Gallé presented his acid-etched cameo technique at the Paris Exhibition of 1889, with the aim of bringing Art Nouveau glass to the public. It was a quicker and cheaper form of decoration, resulting in more affordable, mass-produced but handmade pieces, as no stencils were used and the motif was hand-drawn on each piece.
Émile Gallé began his career working for his father, who owned a glass and ceramics factory, producing designs with floral and heraldic motifs. Very interested in botany, he studied it in depth during his youth, alternating with drawing classes. Between 1862 and 1864, at his father's request, he travelled around Italy, England and Germany, taking an interest in the applied arts but also in subjects that he would later reflect in his works, such as music, philosophy and nature. On his return he settled in Meisenthal, where his family's glass furnaces were located, in order to fully learn the craft of glassmaking. He also travelled to London and Paris to see the collections of their museums. In 1874 he took over his father's factory and soon achieved great international success, winning prizes at International Exhibitions and selling works to important collections and museums. Today, works by Emile Gallé can be seen in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Orsay Museum in Paris, the Brohan Museum in Berlin and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, among many others.
Nature is one of the main sources of inspiration for Gallé, whose style is characterised by the naturalistic rendering of the elements, as if observed through a macro, at a large size, or in the form of landscapes. This piece is worked with hydrofluoric acid, which was Gallé's main industrial production technique. It is a cameo glass, which consists of making a piece with two or more layers of glass of different colours so that, after immersion in the acid, the decorative motif is in relief on a plain background of a different colour. The decoration in this case has three levels, with variations in relief, the dark motif on the light background and, finally, a twilight sky in ochre tones. Gallé presented his acid-etched cameo technique at the Paris Exhibition of 1889, with the aim of bringing Art Nouveau glass to the public. This was a quicker and cheaper form of decoration, resulting in more affordable pieces, which were mass-produced but handmade, as no stencils were used and the motif was drawn by hand on each piece.