ORCHIDEE VASE, CIRCA 1900
Applied, carved, and marquetry cased glass
22.9 x 14 cm;
Engraved Gallé
Bibliography
R. Marx, Émile Gallé – Psychologie de l’artiste et synthèse de l’oeuvre, Art et Décoration,
Paris, August 1911, p. 245, for an illustration of the variant in the Marx collection
Collection Roger Marx – Objets d’Art Moderne, Paris, 13 May 1914, lot 98, the above variant
of this model
J. Bloch-Dermant, L’Art du Verre en France 1860-1914, Lausanne, 1974, p. 100, another similar
example illustrated
L. Buffet-Challié, Le Modern Style, Paris,1975, p. 127, another similar example illustrated
P. Garner, Émile Gallé, Paris, 1976, p. 112, for an illustration of a variant of the green and pink version
B. Warmus, Émile Gallé – Dreams into Glass, The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning,
New York, 1984, pp. 98-101, for illustrations of the Roger Marx collection variant, pp. 102-103,
cat. no. 20, for the variant, lot 45 in the present catalogue
A. Duncan, G. de Bartha, Gallé Le Verre, London, 1984, p. 76, pl. 98, another similar
example illustrated
P. Thiébaut, Gallé, Paris, 1985, p. 172, for an illustration of an 1889 precursor to this model,
and p. 210 for a green and pink version in the collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie,
Boulogne-sur-Mer
A. Duncan, The Paris Salons 1895-1914, Vol. IV: Ceramics and Glass, Woodbridge,
1998, p. 217, design drawing illustrated, p. 224, another similar example illustrated
from the Exposition de l’École de Nancy, Paris, 1903, p. 230, another similar example
illustrated from the Paris Salon 1903-1904
L’École de Nancy, 1889-1909, Paris, 1999, p. 185, another example illustrated
E. Gallé, Émile Gallé, New York, 2014, p. 154, another similar example illustrated
His 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 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.
