Hand with Seaweed
Gallé’s last great glass sculpture: a hand reaching up from the sea, covered in seaweed and shells.
Gallé made the work in 1904, the year he died, and it has been read as an image of the artist going under. It is counted among the strangest glass works of Art Nouveau. It is in the Musée de l’École de Nancy.
Materials: Multi-layered glass with inclusions, metal foil and applied parts
Manufacture: The form was blown and modelled hot; seaweed and shells were applied and the surface worked on the wheel.
The hand reaching up out of the water, its fingers dissolving into weed.
The thick sea-green mass of glass with trapped bubbles and foil.