| The famous
French glass artist Emile Galle was born in Nancy, France in 1846 into
a rapidly industrializing world with major scientific advances. His father
Charles Galle owned a ceramics and glassmaking factory, and in his early
years Emile was exposed academically to botany, art, entomology,and chemistry,
disciplines which were to serve him well in his later artistic career.
In his teens, Galle traveled widely and even fought in the war between
France and Prussia, and in London he was fascinated by the enameling techniques
seen in the oriental collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum. He
began working for the Burgun, Schverer glass company in Meisenthal before
establishing his own company in 1873. While he found experimenting with
classical and enameled designs interesting, his aspirations were dramatically
expanded when seeing the International Exhibition in Paris in 1878. There,
he was exposed in particular to the cameo glass of Joseph Locke and John
Northwood from England and Eugene Rousseau in pate de verre. Galle was
about to combine his love of nature, his chemical training, and his artistic
eye to the worlds of cameo glass, caramics, marquetry, and beyond.
Galle opened a small woodworkers shop
in 1885 where he began experimenting in marquetry designs in
furniture, and he continued working at his father's factory.
In 1889, Emile Galle displayed his new glass creations at the
Paris International Exhibition, designs and colors not previously
seen and causing an immediate sensation. The new style of Art
Nouveau had begun to appear, and Art Nouveau aesthetics
and love of nature appealed naturally to the still young Emile
Galle. Burgun, Schverer produced Galle's designs when he first
established his studio, but in 1894 Galle built his own manufacturing
plant in Nancy and began creating his own designs from inception
through production. Galle personally created many of the designs,
and he was known to actively make alterations and approve the
designs of his talented team of designers and craftsmen he employed
at the "Cristallerie D'Emile Galle."
Emile Galle c. 1895 |
As a botanist, his designs are inspired by
nature, like insects, flowers, dragonflies, and the concentration of dew
on leaves. Galle won many awards throughout his life including the French
Legion of Honor, and he enjoyed great popularity and lucrative commissions
throughout. He produced both complex, intricate glass designs that took
days of painstaking effort to create as well as high quality art glass
which was no less beautiful but was less expensive to produce. Galle work
and cameo glass in particular has always been widely copied even during
Emile Galle's lifetime. His style influenced many of his contemporaries
including Daum, Muller Freres, and Le Verre Francais, who became collectively
known as the "School of Nancy" and of which Galle was elected the first
President.
Galle died in 1904 from
leukemia at the age of 58, and his widow continued to make Galle
glass designs in the factory until the advent of World War I
in 1914 and still using his signature on the pieces but adding
a star after the "Galle" following his death. After World War
I, Paul Perdrizet, Emile's son-in-law, began producing Galle
glass once again, even adding new designs and primarily making
the multi-layer cameo glass in floral and landscape designs.
Galle cameo glass was both wheel cut and acid eteched, both
techniques which required fine craftsmanship to produce and
in which layers of multi-colored glass is progressively removed
to create the designs. All Galle production ceased in 1936 although
reproductions and fakes are still made in great quantities to
fool the uninformed.
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