Prof. Francesco Carelli

 

Émile Gallé (1846 – 1904) was a French artist and designer who worked in glass, and is considered to be one of the major innovators in the French Art Nouveau movement. He was noted for his designs of Art Nouveau glass art and Art Nouveau furniture, and was a founder of the École de Nancy or Nancy School, a movement of design in the city of Nancy, France.
He became involved in social causes. He was a founder, along with Victor Prouvé, of the Université populaire de Nancy, offering university-level classes to workers. He was treasurer of the Nancy branch of the Human Rights League of France and in 1898, at great risk for his business, one of the first to become actively involved in the defense of Alfred Dreyfus. He also publicly defended the Romanian Jews and spoke up in defense of the Irish Catholics in Britain, and supported William O’Brien, one of the leaders of the Irish revolt.

Cased glass and cameo glass were two techniques often used by Gallé. Cased glass was made of two different layers of glass of different colors, fused together by heat. The first case of layer is made in a cold. When it is finished and cooled, a second layer is blown inside the first Then the piece is placed into the furnace, so the two layers fuse together. This could be repeated for multiple layers of glass. Cameo glass was a means of decorating cased glass. The cased glass of two or more colors was carved with a diamond saw or etched with acid, so that the colors of the layer underneath were visible and created a design.
Gallé continually experimented with new techniques of glass art. One of his major innovations was glass marquetry, or applying layers of glass on an object. He attached thin sheets of colored glass onto a hot glass object He could join the laminations or overlay them, adding an infinite number of layers and colors.

A difficulty was the appearance of defects and imperfections caused by contamination of the glass paste by dust or ashes or other materials, which caused what glassmakers called “bubbles”, “grease” or stitches” inside the glass. Gallé decided to take advantage of the defects. He wrote in his patent application, “Concerned about such defects, I had the idea of using them as a decorative means, which permitted me, by inducing the effect in various ways, to obtain an entirely new type of decoration, called patina.” Gallé proposed dusting the surface of the hot glass, which would give the appearance of fabric, or thick cobweb, or other textures. He proposed to make further decoration the surface with engraving, sand blasting, and wheel carving, and to embed fragments of hot glass into this patina or outer layer. The final result would then be covered with a thin layer of clear crystal, which could be left plain or also patinated.

Gallé was particularly innovative in the creation and use of colored glass. He colored glass with a small quantity of cobalt oxide to make a delicate sapphire tone which he called “Clair de lune”, or “moonlight”. He sometimes covered this with a glaze of cobalt blue. He wrote that he created “yellows, some iridescent browns and greens with a base of silver and sulphur, a peacock blue with copper and iron, browns from sulphur and catechu.” He also tried out rare metals such as thallium and iridium, which made particularly dark shadows. His most original and characteristic colors were a deep violet made with manganese, usually on an opaline ground; a pink made with selenium or copper, which he created 1889; and a green made with chromium, which he used to case pieces in three or four layers, giving an exceptional depth and richness of color.