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René Lalique become Sarah Bernard’s personal jeweler. He also created about one hundred and fifty art objects for the famous Portuguese collector Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian. Lalique was a talented artist and a fine manufacturer. He got fed-up seeing his works copied by others so he left the jewelry and started the exclusive manufacturing of glassware. He created vases, statues, perfume bottles, table ware, radiator covers, light fittings and architectural elements, with more and more irregular borders. He produced these in large numbers in his workshop in Combs-la-Ville, near Paris but mostly  in Alsace in  the Wingen sur Moder workshop, which he opened in 1922. It was here, in this region which had a great tradition in glassware, that the House Lalique would prosper and strengthen its international reputation with remarkable achievements like “Les Sources de la France” the fountain created for the  1925 Paris International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts, the ornaments for the International Sleeping-Car Company or the adornment of the first-class dining-room aboard The Normandie cruise ship.

Broche représentant les masques de la Tragédie et de la Comédie avec inscription "A Sarah Bernhardt, la gloire de l’art français, décembre 1896" - René Lalique, 1896 - Collection Comédie-Française

broche Masque avec couples de tritons et naïades

One beautiful Lalique Hood Ornament is 'Chrysis’ a Frosted Car Mascot, design 1931 modeled as a nude female leaning backwards with streaming hair. Chrysis sold at a London auction for £2,800.

Wingen sur Moder-Musee Lalique

Wingen sur Moder-Musee Lalique

Wingen sur Moder-Musee Lalique

It triumphed at the Paris World's Fair of 1900. Photographs show crowds pressed against the glass of Lalique's window displays. One of the pieces he showed was this remarkable corsage ornament, considered by many to be his masterwork.

230 x 265 mm. 270 g.

Emerging from the jaws of a chimera (part serpent, part lion) is a woman/ dragonfly. The dragonfly was an especially popular art nouveau motif, a favorite of Lalique, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and Émile Gallé, all of whom would have seen examples in Japanese art.

Probably its popularity in France grew after translation of a series of Japanese poems (Judith Gautier, Poëmes de la libellule [Poems of the Dragonfly], 1885).

It was purchased by the wealthy collector Calouste Gulbenkian; his wife was the only person ever to have worn it. It would have moved with her the long spine is articulated and the wings hinged to flutter.

But why this conflation of dragonfly and woman? On one level, the two are connected through language: the small iridescent blue and bronze dragonflies, called "damselflies" in English, are demoiselles (young ladies) in French. But probably of greater significance is the idea of metamorphosis.

Interest in biological transformations had been spurred by Darwin's theories of evolution. Yet even this fails to offer satisfactory explanation. Here is a very different sort of metamorphosis, more psychic than physical. It reveals something of fin-de-siècle views on the nature of women -- of women as an embodiment of nature, instinctual and seductive.

Text: InternetPictures: Internet & Daniela IacobCopyright: All the images belong to their authors

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