René Jules Lalique

 

 

Born April 6, 1860 at Ay in the Marne and died on 1 May 1945 is a master glassmaker and French jeweler.

He is famous for his amazing creations of jewelry and perfume bottles, vases, candlesticks, clocks and, at the end of his life, from cars cabochons. The company he founded still works. His name remains attached to the creativity and quality, since he always draw objects glitzy but still discreet.

 

He is interested early in glass as an artistic material and he moved in 1890 a glassworks where he began to experiment with its possibilities, initially in jewelry. There is built in 1904 in both his home, his studio and exhibition store to attract customers. It makes castings and tames the glass-metal bond. His first jewelry featuring this material exposed in 1895.

 

René Lalique was the first to carve the glass in large monumental achievements.

• Hotel Doors of Albert I in Paris

• Fountains roundabout of the Champs-Élysées (dismantled in 1958 and missing since).

• Decorations dining car of the Orient Express (1929), lighting and signs Women, Piper and Raisin.

• Doors of the palace of Prince Asaka Yasuhiko, now the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum, (1932).

• Decorations of the dining room the first classes of the Normandie (1936)

 

With the disgrace of Art Nouveau, and the dark 1930s Lalique jewelry are forgotten. His side really began to start from the 1991 exhibition at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris.

 

René Lalique is not content to create models, it also built a factory in Wingen-sur-Moder to manufacture in large series, and files patents on many manufacturing techniques (compression-molded glass, double bottom glass ).

It also creates aesthetic effects: satin Lalique, the opalescent glass.