Émile Gallé

Private Collection, North Carolina
Barry Friedman Ltd., New York
Rago Auctions, Lambertville, New Jersey, October 18, 2014, lot 286
Burton and Paula Geyer
Sotheby's New York, The Geyer Collection: Masterworks of Tiffany and Prewar Design, December 11, 2018, lot 84
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Philippe Garner, Emile Gallé, New York, 1976, p. 48
Alastair Duncan and Georges de Bartha, Gallé Lamps, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2014, pp. 28-29 (for the shade and variants of the base model)

French glassmaker Emile Gallé was a formative figure in the Art Nouveau movement, showcasing the subtleties of nature in technologically advanced designs. Gallé began designing glassware and pottery for his father’s glass factory at an early age. He grew particularly fond of botany, soon integrating plant life in his designs with an escapist mentality. “The aim of my work,” Gallé expressed, was “the study of nature, the love of nature’s art, and the need to express what one feels in one’s heart.”

The present table lamp is a masterful example of Gallé’s glassmaking with esteemed provenance, having previously been in the Geyer Collection of prewar design. Golden yellow hues emit from the mushroom-shaped shade speckled with silhouettes of umbels, a favorite motif of Gallé’s. The shade grows from a light green glass stem bound by leaves and umbels of patinated wrought iron, while a patinated wrought iron mount wraps sinuously around the glass, its leaves unfurling as if adjusting to the forest floor.