(1846-1904)
A leading figure in French Art Nouveau ceramics and glass, Gallé is closely identified with the establishment of the École de Nancy in 1901, an enterprise that sought to decentralize French decorative arts from its Parisian dominance. His richly decorative work is inspired by his lifelong interest in botany and literary symbolism. Born in Nancy, he was apprenticed in his father's studios, where he gained experience of glass decoration and pottery. He also took lessons in drawing and botany before going on to pursue philosophy and minerology at Weimar from 1865 to 1866. Following this, he spent a period studying glassmaking in the Burgun, Schverer et Cie factory at Meysenthal before returning to Nancy to continue his experiments with glass. In 1871 he was involved with the organization of the Art de France exhibition in London, following which he established his own glass studios in Nancy. He later showed ceramics at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1878 where exposure to the work of his contemporaries inspired him to pursue a more adventurous direction in his own artistic output. In 1883 he established woodworking studios and began to work in marquetry and, in the following year, exhibited at the Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs with 300 pieces of pottery and glass in a variety of styles. At the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris he showed furniture and glass designs, reflecting his interests in literary symbolism and nature as a source of inspiration. This resulted in the award of a Grand Prix and the French Legion of Honour and marked the maturity of an identifiable ‘Gallé stylé’. In this period Gallé was working both in ‘hand’ and ‘art’ glass, the latter geared towards larger-scale production. Having established an Art Nouveau glassmaking business in 1889, in 1894 he built a large new glassworks at Nancy, employing a team of craftsmen-designers to work on designs that drew heavily on nature as a major source of inspiration. His workforce had reached 300 by 1900, the year in which he won further prizes for his glass and furniture at the Paris Exposition Universelle and wrote Contes pour L'Art. In 1901, with Victor Prouvé and Louis Majorelle, he established the École de Nancy, ‘a provincial alliance of art industries’ that sought to decentralize the decorative arts. A successful exhibition of the École's work was shown in Paris in 1903. In the following year (in which he also died), he opened a shop in London.
