vase

As popular in his own time as he is today, Emile Gallé was an artist whose passion and invention are still inspirational. He transformed glass vessels from the functional to the sculptural, and from the decorative to the poetic. In his writings on art, Gallé frequently extolled the beautiful glass object as balm and nourishment for the soul. Quoting the Belgian Symbolist poet Maurice Maeterlinck, Gallé wrote, “A beautiful thing does not die without having purified something.” He continued, “[Maeterlinck] believes in the magical virtue of beauty.” Gallé was a dedicated horticulturist, and his experience of nature was personal and direct. His vases represent a diversity of flowers, ranging from the snowbells of the Alps to the lotuses of the wetlands. This teardrop-shaped vase, made of colorless, light brown, and brownish black glass, is decorated with cameocut magnolia flowers and leaves. In Victorian flower symbolism, the magnolia represents nobility, perseverance, and the love of nature. The brown-black glass, which Gallé called “hyalite” (or hyalith), was specially developed for his vases de tristesse (sadness vases), which were meant to inspire reflections on mortality and the passing of time. Signed “Emile Gallé Cristallerie Nancy” on the base. For more information on Emile Gallé’s vases de tristesse, see Alastair Duncan and Georges de Bartha, Glass by Gallé, London: Thames & Hudson, 1984, pp. 29–30.