Émile
Gallé
 French
glass artist Émile Gallé was born in Nancy, France
in 1846. His father, Charles Gallé, owned a ceramics and
glassmaking factory, and in his early years Emile was exposed to
a variety of disciplines including botany, art, entomology, and
chemistry, all which were to serve him well in his later artistic
career. In his teens, Gallé traveled widely and during a
visit to 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. Although he found experimenting
with classical and enameled designs interesting, his aspirations
were dramatically expanded once he saw 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. Gallé was about to combine his
love of nature, his chemical training, and his artistic eye to the
worlds of cameo glass, ceramics and marquetry.
Gallé opened a small woodworking shop in 1885 and it was
there that he began experimenting with marquetry designs in furniture.
In 1889, Gallé displayed his new glass creations at the Paris
International Exhibition. The designs and colors had not previously
been seen and caused an immediate sensation. The new style of Art
Nouveau had begun to appear, and Art Nouveau aesthetics, including
the love of nature, appealed to the still young Émile Gallé.
Burgun, Schverer produced Gallé's designs when he first established
his studio, but in 1894 Gallé built his own manufacturing
plant in Nancy and began creating his own designs from the initial
idea through production. Gallé 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'Émile Gallé."
As a botanist, his designs were often inspired by nature: insects,
flowers, dragonflies, and the concentration of dew on leaves. Gallé
won many awards throughout his life including the French Legion
of Honor, and he enjoyed great popularity and lucrative commissions
during his lifetime. 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. Gallé’s work, particularly
cameo glass, has always been widely copied even during the artist’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 Gallé
was elected the first President.
Gallé died in 1904 from leukemia at the age of 58. His widow
continued to make Gallé glass designs in the factory until
the start of World War I in 1914. She used his signature on the
pieces made after his death, but added a star after the "Gallé".
After World War I, Paul Perdrizet, Emile's son-in-law, began producing
Gallé glass once again, even adding new designs and primarily
making the multi-layer cameo glass in floral and landscape designs.
Gallé cameo glass was both wheel cut and acid etched; both
versions used a technique in which layers of multi-colored glass
is progressively removed to create the designs. All Gallé
production ceased in 1936 although reproductions and fakes are still
made in great quantities to fool the uninformed.
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