The State Hermitage Museum: Exhibitions

Emile Gallé's fame was chiefly founded on his works in multi-layered glass. It is no coincidence that he favoured this particular material which was a traditional product of his native Lorraine.

Like any major cultural phenomenon, the work of so significant a figure was prepared for by the evolution of the applied arts in Europe in the middle to third quarter of the 19th century. During that period the technology of glass-making, one of the main field in which Gallé's original talent expressed itself, advanced in leaps and bounds from the cottage industry of previous centuries. The artist's forerunners devised new and revived forgotten and lost methods of decorating glass. In his own endeavours in the development and refinement of techniques, Gallé drew not only on their achievements, but also on the advanced industrial base provided by the family business. When he took over his father's firm in 1877, Emile Gallé resolved to alter the character of its products, taking his cue from the best articles then being manufactured. The need to gain a worthy place on the world market obliged Gallé and the artists working with him to experiment with the technology of enamel paints in the 1880s. They also developed a whole series of glassware with "floral forms". Especial fame came from the vases created in multi-layered glass. It was these products of Emile Gallé's studio that would go on to become his "calling card". Multi-layered glass - a technique known since ancient times - appeared in Gallé's products under the influence of oriental art that came into vogue in the last quarter of the 19th century, especially 18th-century Chinese vases made of incised multi-layered coloured glass. Another prototype for his work was the English "cameo vases" that had delighted the public at the Paris World Fair in 1878. Gallé perfected the technique of multi-layered glass, exploiting all its inherent possibilities. Drawing on the innovations made by other well-known firms, he placed metal foil between the layers of glass and added metal oxides to the molten glass. Gallé's interest in botany determined the preponderance of naturalistic floral motifs in the decoration of his pieces. At the turn of the 20th century Emile Gallé's style altered substantially. That period saw the discovery of new possibilities for the working of multi-layered glass. For example, on top of the technique of complex etching on several planes that Gallé had used in the 1880s, there came the marquetry technique that he developed in 1898, something that had previously been used on furniture. The lines in the decoration of his pieces became softer, while the shapes themselves remained traditional.

In his original works the main role, as Gallé saw things, was played not by techniques of astonishing complexity or a design with subtle gradations of colour decorating a vase, but the philosophical content that he invested in each of the pieces he created. We cannot set this aside when examining Gallé's works, otherwise we lose the link between form, decoration and semantic content in the articles produced under his direction. A refined decorative addition to some of his vases were lines of verse taken from the works of his favourite
poets - Baudelaire, Verlaine, Hugo, Maeterlinck or Hinzelin. These are what Gallé called his "speaking pieces" - verreries parlantes. This attempt to create "philosophy in glass" accorded with aspirations of Emile Gallé, the scientist and artist. Loyalty to the traditions of the past prevented their creator from accepting in full measure the ideas that came into the ascendant in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in the heyday of the Art Nouveau: the rejection of traditional forms and the creation of abstract decorations that had no semantic aspect to them. The works that he produced during the peak of his career remain within the bounds of a single artistic tendency - Symbolism.

Vase with a depiction of the bottom of the sea
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