LALIQUE FRANCE – Vase Bagatelles - c. 1980

Vase Bagatelle (Trifle, Triviality) is designed in 1939 by René Jules Lalique (1860 -1945) who was a highly talented and profilic French goldsmith and glass artist whose work is considered Art Nouveau and Art Deco. His supremely elegant and meticulous art has, more than any other, profoundly marked the Art Deco style that triumphed in France between the two world wars while remaining surprisingly contemporary. Having established a career as a leading designer of exclusive jewellery in the Art Nouveau style, Lalique had 1910 turned his attention to luxury glassmaking. His imaginative, highly original glassware was functionals as decorative. He employed a variety of techniques like acid etching with sandblasting to produce a frosty opalescence. Lalique's glass work had exceptional relief, a very refined decoration and was made in three ways: blown into moulds with the mouth, mechanically made: “aspiré-soufflé” or “pressé-soufflé”, or it was press moulded. The base material was semi-crystal - glass with maximum fifty percent lead, colourless or coloured with metal oxides, sulphite and chlorides. Opal glass was obtained by processing a layer of opaque white glass between two layers of coloured glass. Other forms of decoration were obtained by staining it with enamel; by etching it with acids and by exposing glass to the gasses of metal oxides in a muffle furnace or by polishing it with polishing red or high-speed polishing discs. Many of his jewels were commissioned by Sarah Bernhardt and his most important client Calouste Gulbenkian. Lalique made jewellery for Cartier, Bocheron, Destape and Aucoq and perfume bottles for Coty, Roger et Gallet, Worth and Maison Lalique. He became world famous with the monumental glass fountain and his own pavilion at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industrielles in Paris in 1925 and made all the luxury glass and lightning for the 1st class of the ocean liner Le Normandie and for the luxury train Orient Express. Around 1926 Lalique opened up to architectural projects such as wall panels, outdoor fountains and church stained glass windows for, among others, the Palace of Prince Asaka in Tokyo and the extraordinary St Matthew's Church in Jersey.