Imre Jakabffy (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 8. (Budapest, 1984)
VARGA, Vera: Art Nouveau art glasses
1. Bottle with stopper, Emile Gallé, c. 1890. Blown, enamelled, gilt glass, decorated with gold foil and applied glass thread. Ht. 14,5 cm. velopment of which the effect of Japanese art is primary. By 1889 Gallé broke off the use of historical motifs — which we could find in the early 90-ies — his works had floreal patterns, with symbolical meaning. In Paris the fashion of Japanese art began at the end of the 1860-ies, we can realize its influence on the works of Rousseau rather early, but on Gallé's glasses we can only recognise it at the beginning of the 1890-ies. 2 It is since that time, that Gallé began to mark his pieces with the term „alla japonica", beside the usual signature. Gallé's conception of nature also changed by the effects of Japanese art, for Gallé, it denotes partly the means of the representation of delicate colouring and ornaments (it is the case, when colouring system is often independent of the representation), and partly means a philosophical category, which has abstract, symbolical meaning, under the surface of the represented theme. Nature (as for Ruskin and the praeraphaelites) is the source of all beauty, by its appearence and by its symbolical meaning, shown by the artist, as well. Put the matter in that light, Gallé's detailed botanical studies and working as a practising gardener become understandable. Gallé describes the flowers, personifying then, as independent individuals, which have their own individuality; the most beautiful pieces of these descriptions are found in Gallé's artistic biography, in the Écrits pour l'art. It was Gallé's conception of nature — nature as the representation of a symbolic theme or action —, that resulted his most famous and indisputable valuable series: the 'Verreries Parlantes', the 'Poèmes Vitrifiés', the 'Vases Noirs', the 'Les Hommes Noirs' and the 'Vases de Tristesse' art glasses. Studying the symbolical meaning of that series, comperatively the simplest is the 'Verreries Parlantes', the representations of these vases are illustrations of certain quatations of French classical, romantical and symbolic poets and writers, quatations from the French translation of VergiZ's, Dante's and Shakespeare's works. 102
