Émile Gallé "La Mer" Table Lamp
Regular price
$75,000
This exquisite La mer lamp by Émile Gallé features twin shades modeled on the blooms of the crown imperial (Fritillaria imperialis), a golden lily long associated with sovereignty, here rendered in dichroic glass that shifts with the light—appearing deep violet flecked with blue and gold in reflected light, and glowing red-orange, mottled with inky black, in transmitted light, like the unstable surface of the sea. Each fragile bloom is supported by intertwined bronze thistle stems that arc downward in a gesture of both protection and surrender.
Item #: YEL-22191
Artist: Émile Gallé
Country: France
Circa: 1904
Dimensions: 21" height, 12" width, 9.5" depth.
Materials: Glass, Wrought Iron
Signed: each shade engraved Gallé
Literature: Philippe Garner, Emile Gallé, London, 1976, p. 27 (wrought-iron armature design illustrated)
Victor Arwas, Art Nouveau, The French Aesthetic, London, 2002, p. 483 (vase illustrated displaying the same glass making technique)
Duncan, Alastair, and Georges De Bartha. 2014. Gallé Lamps. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors’ Club Ltd. p. 38
Item #: YEL-22191
Artist: Émile Gallé
Country: France
Circa: 1904
Dimensions: 21" height, 12" width, 9.5" depth.
Materials: Glass, Wrought Iron
Signed: each shade engraved Gallé
Literature: Philippe Garner, Emile Gallé, London, 1976, p. 27 (wrought-iron armature design illustrated)
Victor Arwas, Art Nouveau, The French Aesthetic, London, 2002, p. 483 (vase illustrated displaying the same glass making technique)
Duncan, Alastair, and Georges De Bartha. 2014. Gallé Lamps. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors’ Club Ltd. p. 38
Created in the year preceding Gallé’s death from leukemia, the lamp belongs to his final period, when the sea became a central metaphor in his work, signifying dissolution, return, and transformation; this imagery also informs his Écume de mer vases, conceived as a funerary tribute following the death of Léo Keller, the son of Gallé’s close friend and patron Charles Keller. Drawing on European folklore in which sea foam marks the threshold between form and disappearance, and resonating with the maritime poetry Gallé admired—from Georges Rodenbach to Baudelaire—La mer unites botanical symbolism and marine imagery in a poignant meditation on impermanence, in which all that appears crowned is ultimately yielded back to the sea.
Created in the year preceding Gallé’s death from leukemia, the lamp belongs to his final period, when the sea became a central metaphor in his work, signifying dissolution, return, and transformation; this imagery also informs his Écume de mer vases, conceived as a funerary tribute following the death of Léo Keller, the son of Gallé’s close friend and patron Charles Keller. Drawing on European folklore in which sea foam marks the threshold between form and disappearance, and resonating with the maritime poetry Gallé admired—from Georges Rodenbach to Baudelaire—La mer unites botanical symbolism and marine imagery in a poignant meditation on impermanence, in which all that appears crowned is ultimately yielded back to the sea.
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