Emile Gallé

Emile Gallé liked creating his studio pieces in series dedicated to specific themes. He thus created vases with underwater motifs, and also vases featuring French or Alpine flora. The vase presented here with edelweiss flowers on the front and mountain peaks on the back is a particular rare piece. In accordance with the symbolist tendencies of the time, Gallé endeavoured as early as at the beginning of the 1890s to incorporate landscape representations into his vases, thus also reflecting the individual, rich and effective atmospheric character of nature in all its aspects. This vase is an outstanding example of Emile Gallé‘s talent for creating atmospheric moods through the skillful selection and use of coloured glass. The white, seemingly opalescent glass and the accompanying, sometimes contrasting colours of the glass powder applied most beautifully imitate the light conditions in the cold, snow-covered mountains. Both the extremely intricate surface treatment of the edelweiss, executed in a delicately detailed, polished relief-cut as well as the outer wall executed partially in Martelé technique and subsequently polished in a semi-matt façon, add to the vase’s mysterious shimmer.