Rene Lalique (1860-1945) was a French jeweller, glassmaker, and designer whose work, particularly in the period from approximately 1895 to 1910, did more than that of any other single craftsman to define the Art Nouveau idiom in jewellery. Operating from his workshop on the rue Therese in Paris and later from rue Royale, Lalique broke with the diamond-dominated tradition of the late nineteenth century and reorganised jewellery practice around the principle that materials should serve the subject rather than the other way round. From around 1909 he turned increasingly to glass, founding the firm that became the contemporary Lalique glass house, and effectively withdrawing from active jewellery production. The two careers, taken together, place him among the small handful of figures whose work materially altered the trajectory of decorative arts in the modern period.

Early career

Lalique was born at Ay, in Champagne, and trained in Paris and London. He returned to Paris in 1880 and worked as an independent designer, supplying designs to firms including Cartier, Boucheron, Vever and Aucoc through the 1880s. By the late 1880s he had set up his own workshop, and from approximately 1890 he had developed the distinctive design vocabulary that would mark his maturity. The 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, where his display in the Palais des Industries Diverses won universal acclaim, was the moment of his international consecration; the show was visited by Sarah Bernhardt, the Calouste Gulbenkian collection (which would acquire many of his major pieces), and the leading critics of the day, and from that point Lalique was the most-discussed jeweller of his generation.

Design philosophy and materials

The break that Lalique made with the established jewellery tradition was philosophical as well as visual. The norm of the late nineteenth century, particularly in the Parisian Place Vendome firms, was the diamond rivière, the diamond-set tiara, and the diamond solitaire, with the principal artistic question being how to maximise the brilliance and value of the central stone. Lalique reversed the priority. He used materials not for their commodity value but for their colour, texture and capacity to evoke the subject: horn, ivory, opal, moonstone, plique-a-jour enamel, glass, mother-of-pearl, baroque pearls, garnet, semi-precious stones, sometimes in combination with diamond and gold but never as a vehicle for them. The subjects were drawn from nature and from symbolic-mythological sources: dragonflies, peacocks, snakes, female figures with flowing hair, vegetative motifs of mistletoe, ferns, lily-of-the-valley, and butterflies.

Plique-a-jour and the technical contribution

The technical contribution most strongly associated with Lalique is the recovery and refinement of plique-a-jour enamel, the technique in which translucent vitreous enamel is held in cells of metal without backing, so that light passes through the enamel as through stained glass. The technique had been used in medieval and Renaissance work but had been substantially neglected through much of the nineteenth century. Lalique, working with the enameller Tourrette and others, perfected the application of plique-a-jour at a scale and reliability that allowed it to become a defining element of his Art Nouveau pieces. The dragonfly corsage ornament now in the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, with its plique-a-jour wings, is the iconic example.

Subject and symbolism

Lalique's most characteristic subjects, the dragonfly, the snake, the peacock, the female figure with flowing hair, and the various plant motifs (mistletoe, fern, thistle, ivy), are drawn from the Symbolist literary and artistic culture of the 1890s. The dragonfly-woman, in particular, with the female figure emerging from or transforming into the wings of the insect, is a recurring image with strong Symbolist resonance. The transformation from the natural to the human, the play of organic forms, and the cultivation of an explicitly poetic and atmospheric content distinguished Lalique's work sharply from the more decorative naturalism of the contemporary mainstream.

The 1900 Exposition and after

The 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle was the high point of Lalique's jewellery career and the high point of Art Nouveau jewellery generally. The years immediately following saw extensive production of jewellery in the established Lalique manner, with major commissions for clients including Calouste Gulbenkian (who became one of the most committed collectors), Sarah Bernhardt, the actress Yvette Guilbert, and a wide international clientele. By 1910, however, fashion was beginning to shift away from the Art Nouveau idiom, and the simpler geometries of what would become Art Deco were emerging. Lalique, sensing the change, turned his energies to glass.

The shift to glass

From approximately 1907, in collaboration with the perfumer Francois Coty, Lalique began producing perfume bottles. He acquired a glass factory at Combs-la-Ville in 1909 and a much larger one at Wingen-sur-Moder in Alsace in 1921. The Wingen-sur-Moder works, taken on after the post-war return of Alsace to France, became the centre of Lalique glass production and remains so under successor ownership today. The glass output from the 1920s and 1930s, including vases, hood ornaments, lighting, perfume bottles, and architectural glass, is characterised by frosted and clear surfaces in stylised Art Deco forms, with subjects again drawn predominantly from nature and mythology.

The post-war and contemporary firm

Rene Lalique died in 1945. The firm passed to his son Marc Lalique and then to his granddaughter Marie-Claude Lalique, both of whom continued the glass production with stylistic adaptations. The contemporary Lalique brand, since 2008 owned by the Art & Fragrance group (now Lalique Group), continues glass production at Wingen-sur-Moder and has selectively reissued limited editions of historic Lalique designs, including some of the iconic Art Nouveau jewellery patterns. Original Rene Lalique jewellery from the 1895-1910 period is essentially never on the primary market; it appears at auction through Christie's, Sotheby's and the major Paris houses, where pieces have established the highest prices ever paid for jewellery of the Art Nouveau period.

Legacy

For the modern jewellery historian Lalique is the central figure of Art Nouveau jewellery. The combination of his technical contribution (particularly in plique-a-jour), his design vision (the prioritisation of subject over commodity-material), and his individual virtuosity makes him a touchstone against which all other Art Nouveau jewellers are measured. The major museum collections, principally the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon (which holds approximately 145 pieces, the largest single Lalique jewellery collection), the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris, the Petit Palais, and the Musee Lalique at Wingen-sur-Moder, are the principal repositories. The contemporary Art Nouveau revival in jewellery, present from time to time across the post-war period, has consistently looked back to Lalique as the standard of the idiom.