Lot 48
Estimate: £7,000 - £9,000
Auction: 11 December 2024 from 10:00 GMT
unsigned, the brownish clear glass with polychrome enamels, decorated with vegetal designs and two cusped cartouches containing Persian huntsmen on horseback
15cm high; 38cm diameter max.
Prominent UK Collection.
Emile Gallé (1846-1904)
Since the Middle Ages, Islamic ceramics had been admired in Europe for their rich glazes and colourful decoration. Islamic art also provided French glass artists of the 1850s with a new source of inspiration. Introduced to the glass of Islam by Phillipe Joseph Brocard, Emile Gallé is considered one of the most outstanding glass artists of his time and a pioneer of the Art Nouveau movement. He travelled in Paris, London and Weimar after his training, which included art, botany, and chemistry, and began producing fine pottery, furniture and jewellery. Gallé's early work in the 1880s frequently borrowed motifs from Indo-Persian miniatures and Islamic calligraphy. Like his teacher Brocard, Gallé was also unable to read Arabic thus rather than slavishly copy ancient inscriptions he simply invented his own Islamic/ French language alphabet which he inscribed mottoes on his glass with bright colours.