René Lalique: From Jewellery to Glass

René Lalique (1860–1945) was a French designer who first made Art Nouveau jewellery of gold, enamel and glass and then became the foremost glass designer of his time. He designed perfume bottles, vases, bowls and car mascots in pressed, often frosted and opalescent glass, and his style moved from Art Nouveau to Art Deco.

Facts

The jeweller

René Lalique trained as a goldsmith in Paris and London and made his breakthrough in the 1890s. His jewellery broke the rules of the time: he valued form more than precious stones and used enamel, horn, ivory and glass alongside gold. The motifs were women, dragonflies, snakes and plants. See Lalique’s brooch and read about Lalique.

The jewellery was shown at the Paris world’s fair of 1900 and became one of the most famous expressions of Art Nouveau. Compare with the style of Louis Comfort Tiffany and with the stricter forms of the Wiener Werkstätte. Read about the period under Art Nouveau.

From jewel to glass

Around 1905 Lalique began to work with glass. His great breakthrough came when the perfumer François Coty asked him to design labels and then bottles, from 1908. The bottle changed the role of perfume: it became part of the product and not just a package. See the perfume bottle L’Effleurt.

To be able to make large series Lalique built his own glassworks in 1921 at Wingen-sur-Moder in Alsace. There glass objects were made in pressed and mould-blown glass, with methods that made his design possible to buy for more than the richest. Artistic pieces could still be made in a technique where the wax model was lost, so that every object became unique. Lalique also took up a long tradition of French crystal-making but made it industrial. He drew the forms himself and then let skilled workers press, polish and finish the surface by hand, so that every object still received a fine, personal surface.

Frosted and opalescent

Lalique’s glass is recognised by its surface. He used clear glass frosted with acid, so that the relief appeared as soft shadows, and opalescent glass that shifts from bluish white to yellow-orange depending on the light. The motifs were women, flowers, birds, fish and stags. The edges are often sharply formed and the surface matt at the relief and glossy between the details.

One of the best-known objects is the radiator figure, the car mascot, which he made from 1925 onwards. Best known is the female figure with flying hair often called Victoire. In the 1920s he also took on large commissions for architecture: doors, fountains and walls, among them the panels in the carriages of the Orient Express and St Matthew’s Church in Jersey.

Art Deco and legacy

At the Paris exhibition of 1925, which gave its name to Art Deco, an entire glass fountain by Lalique was shown. His style had by then moved from the curving lines of Art Nouveau to more geometric forms, but with the same tender view of nature. After his death in 1945 his son Marc and later his daughter Marie-Claude carried on the business. In the interwar years his glass became a sign of modern, urban taste and was found in salons, hotels and on ocean liners, and he often received commissions for large hotel and restaurant interiors.

Today you tell genuine Lalique from copies by the signature: a more or less clearly engraved R. Lalique France, with different stamps for different periods. After 1945 the name was written without the R. Older pieces and later production can have different values, so always check with an expert before you buy.

How to recognise it

Exercise

What did René Lalique do before glass?