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Emile Gallé
There are certain names in the history of the applied arts
that have shaped whole fields of creative endeavour. The name of Emile
Gallé is inseparably associated with articles made of multi-layered
glass, particularly vases decorated with orchids, thistles and other flowers
and plants. Gallé's works can be found in museums and private collections,
while the antiques market abounds with them. Consequently there is much
interest in Gallé himself, who was an extraordinary individual.
He was a scholar of botany, a writer, and artist and a philosopher and
in all those field he achieved serious results, although he has gone down
in history chiefly as the creator of works in multi-layered glass. The
reason for Gallé's phenomenal popularity lies in his mystic, philosophical
pieces, in which meaning is conveyed through simple symbols and is therefore
easily grasped. Gallé was an outsanding figure working at the time
when the search for new forms of artistic expression merged with scientists'
investigations. It is absolutely obvious that he thought as a scholar
of botany and his scientific understanding did indeed help him to express
himself through the images of art, first in glass, then in wood. Gallé
did not restrict himself to a search for new artistic approaches: like
the majority of his fellows at the time, he also engaged in researches
in the realm of artistic theory. In the articles and transcriptions of
speeches that make up Gallé's book on art, he addresses such themes
as art and nature, art and science, art and society and art and literature.
In glass and wood Gallé extolled his native region of Lorraine,
a province of eastern France, from 1871 divided and on the border with
Germany. In Nancy, the capital of Lorraine, in 1901 a group of like-minded
artists came together to form the core of a new tendency - the industrial
artists of the Alliance provinciale des industries d'Arts that became
known as the Nancy School. The Nancy School is a whole philosophical concept,
embracing a new world view connected with the perception of life in the
late 19th and early 20th centuries. Drawing on the theories of the Englishmen
John Ruskin and William Morris, the artists of the Nancy School sought
to find compromises between respect for traditions and for handwork and
the industrialization that was proceeding inexorably. This association
became, along with Paris-based groupings, a centre for the Art Nouveau
in France. Emile Gallé, as a world-renowned master in the applied
arts, was elected president of the Nancy art school in 1901. His works
were displayed with success at the World Fairs held in Paris in 1887,
1889 and 1900. They were included in official governmental gifts, testimony
to the high value contemporaries placed on his creations. Today, at the
start of the 21st century, we can fully appreciate the contriubtion that
Emile Gallé and other members of the Nancy School made to the creation
of Art Nouveau that expressed the psychology of the era.
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Plate depicting a lady in 17th-century costume
Gallé's ceramics
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Marquetry table with carved legs in the form of dragon-flies
Workshop of Emile Gallé, Nancy
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Oak doors created by Eugene Vallin for Gallé's factory
Museum of the Nancy School
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Detail of Louis Majorelle's villa
Henri Sauvage, Nancy
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The municipal
Jardin de Pepinière in Nancy
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