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Lot Essay
This striking vase ‘Orchidée’ of around 1900, with its full-relief application of a coelogina cristata in full bloom, is the fulfilment of a model that dates back to 1889. In that year Gallé included a version of the vase in his submission to the Exposition Universelle in Paris. The model, its form derived from that of an archaic Chinese Han bronze vessel, was executed in a lightly veined glass whose decoration was rendered in surface enameling, patination, and engraving. The motifs were drawn from both Islamic and Japanese sources. The piece illustrated the eclecticism that marked Gallé’s oeuvre, particularly in its earlier chapters before the emergence through the 1890s and the fulfilment around 1900 of his mature style. The present piece exploits the same Han form, but now with a more complex and richer decoration in the mass of the glass, and with the chosen flower, the orchid, represented in luscious full relief. A version of this model was presented at the Exposition Universelle of 1900 in Paris and an example was in the illustrious contemporary collection of Roger Marx, art critic, connoisseur, Inspector-general of French museums and subsequently editor of La Gazette des Beaux-Arts .
The Nakamoto Collection boasts two versions of the model, providing an instructive case study (see lot 145). We note straight away that the vases are similar, but not identical. Such is the reality of the internal decoration of the glass itself and the challenge of working the glass in high relief that it is not possible for the artisans to precisely replicate a model. Each creation becomes a ‘pièce unique’. Just as in nature, where, for instance, every leaf of a species is a matching but unique universe of fractal geometry, so in his art Gallé, working in close harmony with his team of artisans, would create a concept and chance, in the service of high skill, would give individuality and character to each result.
The model also exists in variegated jade green and pink with a pink flower in the former collection of Roger Marx and in the collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie, Boulogne-sur-mer.
The Nakamoto Collection boasts two versions of the model, providing an instructive case study (see lot 145). We note straight away that the vases are similar, but not identical. Such is the reality of the internal decoration of the glass itself and the challenge of working the glass in high relief that it is not possible for the artisans to precisely replicate a model. Each creation becomes a ‘pièce unique’. Just as in nature, where, for instance, every leaf of a species is a matching but unique universe of fractal geometry, so in his art Gallé, working in close harmony with his team of artisans, would create a concept and chance, in the service of high skill, would give individuality and character to each result.
The model also exists in variegated jade green and pink with a pink flower in the former collection of Roger Marx and in the collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie, Boulogne-sur-mer.