Emile Gallé

(May 8, 1846 - September 23, 1904)

Emile Gallé was the son of Charles Gallé, a proprietor of a ceramic and glassware shop in Nancy who employed ceramicists and decorators to produce his own line of faience. The young Emile Gallé began to learn the skills of the craftsman, painting objects and helping to cut and enamel the glassware. After studying painting and design both in Nancy and Weimar, he began a practical apprenticeship in Meisenthal. After further work and study in London and Paris he returned to Nancy, where he assumed the artistic direction of his father's firm in 1874.

The Exposition Universelle of 1878 brought Gallé to the attention of the public with his faience, which until 1882 was more important in his oeuvre than glass. Gallé made his mark as a true artist in glass at the 1884 Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, where he showed 300 pieces of great artistic variety as well as technical expertise.

In 1884 Gallé added a cabinetmaking workshop to his studios, which proved to be very successful and displayed his fascination with exotic woods, marquetry and ornament. After visiting Berlin in 1884 to see the Brandt collection of Chinese glass, Gallé was inspired to use opaque glass exclusively and confirmed his decision to make cased glassware with nature as a source of ornament. By 1891, his international fame growing, Gallé exhibited only individual works at the salons where, the importance of his work already recognized, they were acquired by museums and collectors.

At the Exposition Universelle of 1900, which was the final triumph of his career, Gallé's glass and furniture won him two top prizes. In 1901 he founded and became the first president of the École de Nancy. He died shortly before its triumphant exhibition in 1904, but his artwork lives on in almost every museum around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian, and the Musée du Louvre in Paris.