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Tiffany & Co. was an American luxury Company in the early 19th century that produced glass products in Art Nouveau style. Tiffany & Co. continues to work in the present century and locates at 200 Fifth Avenue, New York City.
Wisteria Studio lamp produced by Tiffany & Co., designed in the form of a dark lavender-blue flowering plant running perpendicular downwards. Wisteria is a plant with blue and purple flowers that hangs from a pergola during the warmer seasons. The dark-lava coloured lampshade forms the bronze rod and ends up to the vine frame structure, covering the lampshade’s cap. The leaded glass from the top evokes a delicate dangling floral fabric.
In Turin, Italy, the Prima Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte Decorativa Moderna awarded a grand prize for the lamp. Another award went to the Pond Lily decorative lamp, also produced by Tiffany & Co. The exposition was a fabulous event for Art Nouveau and the associated manufacturers who made applied art products in the same style.
In this series of articles, I would like to draw your attention to the industrial design of lighting fixtures manufacturing in Art Nouveau style. In this regard, I should mention two companies that produced lampshades and chandeliers in the early 19th century as the pioneers and the leaders of this art industry, Tiffany & Co. and the Daum Studio.
First, I shall introduce Tiffany & Co., which was in the early 19th century an American Company for stationery and fancy goods. Gradually, the company produced and sold more and more luxury items. The firm had various applied arts products and used diverse materials in its distinctive, controversial product range.
Lewis Tiffany, the second director of the company after his father, was in his youth, in the first place a painter and later became fascinated by the science of chemistry. The glassmaking procedures were one of his practical concerns and research interests.
As a first-rate glassmaker Company, Daum Studio has survived since the previous centuries. Daum worked with famous artists such as Majorelle, Dali, Arman and Hilton McConnico. The Company was founded in 1878 by Jean Daum, grew by his two sons, Auguste and Antonin Daum, and offered during 140 years their unique collection of Applied Arts.
Here you see the historical Three-Armed Torch Lamp designed and produced by Daum Company.
Their production gained a special status with their effect obtained by rolling hot glass in coloured powder glass. Daum Studio invented many glass production techniques. The powder adhered, fused, formed the glass body, and created a new outer layer.
Daum Studio is a fabulous glassmaker master who has historically survived and kept alive from two centuries ago. They worked with great artists, including Majorelle, Dali, Arman and Hilton McConnico. Founded in 1878 by Jean Daum and later grew under his two sons, Auguste and Antonin Daum, they produced for nearly 140 years. They offered their unique collection in Applied Art history.
Like Gallé, the Daum’s brothers sought their spiritual and visual inspiration in nature. This lamp, designed in Art Nouveau style, features bare trees in a snowy landscape.
Tiffany & Co., an American luxury Company, founded in the early 19th century, produced glass products in Art Nouveau style. The company continues its work today with its headquarter in New York City and other locations in the United States, Mexico, Canada, and other European countries.
In 1894, the company developed Favrile glass that later became a brand, and used ingrained colour in the glass itself to produce stained-glass windows. In truth, Tiffany chose to paint with the glass rather than on the glass. Treating molten glass with metallic oxides and alloys led to unique hues, iridescent colours and free-flowing shapes in design.
During four years of the first decade of the 19th century, Tiffany & Co. manufactured 200 electric lamps, 300 fuel lamps and 200 hanging lampshades. The firm produced narrow bases and light stems relying on the potential electrical lighting techniques.
Between 1920-1930 René Lalique developed his techniques, changed the patterns from curvy natural to stylish geometrical, and gave up Art Nouveau’s style rules while enhancing his artistic position in Art Deco. During the Art Deco period, still, his creations were stunning, his themes magical, and his aesthetic status was exceptionally fashionable and recognized among the art connoisseurs in the following decade.
The exhausted Art Nouveau, replaced by Deco’s geometrical influences, couldn’t provide the required conditions for mass production. The production of standardized interchangeable parts in large quantities decreased the prices. It was an unavoidable manufacturing process. Mechanized production methods challenged the elaborately detailed designs, lowered the use of expensive materials and reduced unique handmade products.
This vase has an embossed motif of the glossy green coloured kissing lovebirds lying on a cream coloured background.
Nature was a wonderful inspiration for designers during the Art Nouveau period. Curious about Japanese art, these designers didn’t copy nature but transformed it into an expressive art that had distinguished ornamental characteristics.
In advance, Lalique used undulating, sinuous natural themes in colourful compositions in jewellery. But after applying glass pieces along with diamonds, opals, and semi-precious stones, he observed the natural qualities of glass and moved slowly into glass art.
The Bacchantes vase of Lalique Company depicted iconic holly figures, passionate young females and sculptural nudes on the vase’s surface. These products are still one of the bestsellers of Lalique company. In Roman religion, Bacchantes were the followers of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and ecstasy. Lalique defined sensuality, bending movements, and unconcealed joy as flaunted visual aspects in his vase designs.
The production of Lalique’s vase used a well-known technique popular by the glassmakers and metal sculptors over many centuries. The method of the low wax casting, in French Cire Perdue, had been used in ancient times by the Romans and included the stage of the model and mould-making before wax casting. While the wax was encased and hardened in the mould and became a moulding compound, the wax melted at temperature and poured out. Lalique’s factory moulds were mainly a mixture of water, quartz and plaster. After the plaster moulds could have been able to reach their desired shape, the factory filled them with cast glass and blew them through the molten glass.
René Lalique entered the next stage of his artistic business once the mass production of exquisite perfume bottles became possible. Producing an extensive range of luminous glassware with intricate motifs made him an eminent expert and glass master. He brought a wide variety of products, including vases, bottles and ashtrays in both frosted and clear glass, to the market, with a high sculptural quality, dynamic compositions and outstanding designs.
Poppies, the ornamental colourful flowering plant grown for decorative and display purposes, inspired Lalique and was his favourite floral theme.
René Lalique entertained himself in his childhood with flora and fauna. Later in his work, he sought inspiration from natural forms and undulating, sinuous curves of flowers, trees, birds, and insects. Methodological feminine features were the source of his inventiveness. These features compassed his artistic creativity with hybrid female creatures, nymphs, mermaids and fairies. Primarily Lalique was known for his glass vases, sculptures and bowls.
René Lalique was first an apprentice to jeweller Louis Aucoc, a famous and leading Parisian goldsmith. In his second career, he worked as a freelance designer by Cartier and Boucheron, the French multi-industry companies, before starting with his own business. Lalique set up his company on Rue du Quatre-Septembre, Paris in 1887. He borrowed motifs from Japanese artwork and wood prints, abandoned lavish style, used semi-precious stone in jewellery, and introduced glass as a new medium in applied art.
Hotel Tassel, located on Rue Paul- Emile Janson 6, Brussels, Belgium, is one of the most famous Art Nouveau architectural buildings in Europe.
Victor Horta designed it, the Belgian architect who achieved great success as a precursor of Art Nouveau. After a short time, the style expanded internationally in architecture, fine art, and decorative art.
Victor Horta’s design had no reference in style, like other European architecture. In those days, the architects imitated the historical concepts and incorporated them with Gothic and Renaissance elements. Horta’s work was against the dominated eclectic Historicism that referred to the past.
The first architect that understood Victor Horta’s work was Hector Guimard, the architect of Paris Metro entrances. He declared Horta as the inventor of Art Nouveau and followed his style.
Hotel Tassel has an open floor plan. The central hall surrounded by the townhouse’s rooms includes the most amazing staircase in European architecture.
The stained glass windows beside the circular staircase on the top floor escalate the daylight. While the vegetal-designed stairway fences invigorate the interior and create openness, the elaborate mosaic flooring alongside the textured-floral wallpaper reflects pinkish-orange light colour on the stair surfaces.
Horta Museum, located in Rue Américaine 27, Brussels, Belgium was the former house and office (Maison & Atelier) of Victor Pierre Horta, the Belgian architect and almost be said the founder of the Art Nouveau movement.
For twenty years, the house intended for a double program, living and working and had served his designer Victor Horta. This building became his place of work and residence, with separated entrances for the house and the studio. Horta sold those two blocks of the building to two different new owners. But after another thirty years, the Commune de Saint-Giles bought the whole project from the previous residents and turned it into a museum. Horta Museum opened to the public in 1969 after the renovation. The restoration process had constantly been evolving. Later the authorities removed the lift installed in the sixties during the reconstruction, and the stairway turned into the previous state as it was once. It seems that after a hundred years, the landlord had returned to his home again.
The Belgians celebrated the work of its creator Victor Horta and dedicated the house to him. The building includes many documents, archives, and books of Horta and the designs of his contemporary colleagues who had contributed to Art Nouveau’s evolution.
Accessibility and openness enhanced free-flowing spaces that opposed the rigidness in the plan forming. Iron use supported the transparency effect in the building, and its innovative presence in combination with other new materials became one of the distinctive features of Art Nouveau architecture.
In this building, metalworking in windows created new possibilities for daylighting, for the lighter spaces and maximum visual comfort. Horta’s Museum also used ironwork in the curly details, the spiral staircase railings, the metal ceiling edges in the dining room, the lighting fixtures. The curved motifs inspired by flower and plant shapes were applied in metal arches outside and the balcony pillars.
One of the first examples of Art Nouveau architecture is Villa Majorelle. The awning by the porch, the wrought-iron entrance, and the front gate’s bell manifest the metalwork in the New Art style. These elaborated building elements had provided new possibilities for the building creators who displayed Art Nouveau’s beauty’s secrets in their design concept.
Villa Majorelle is located in Nancy, France, designed by Henri Savage, a young French architect in the early 20th century. Louis Majorelle, a French furniture designer and a first-class decorator of the Art Nouveau style, had commissioned the project for his work and his collaborations with the other artists of his time. The artistic magazines at that time had published articles about the charm of the Villa. They mentioned it as “A house made by an artist for an artist.”
The Villa Majorelle consists of three building blocks with different facades and individual roof shapes. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, the French architectural theorist, provided a new definition to Art Nouveau, a description versus the historical Beaux-Arts style:” For each function its material and for each material its form and its ornament”. The interaction between the form and function in the three building blocks of Villa Majorelle represented their different purposes and distinct appearances.
The Interior has delicate parts and depicts the Art Nouveau style. In the vestibule inside the front part of the building laid a colourful mosaic floor. Outstanding decorative elements such as a carved wood panel, a decorative brass plate, a big arcuate mirror behind an umbrella rack made the space by the entrance exceptional.
One of the architectural characteristics in Art Nouveau style is the extensive use of the wrought iron, which emerged in the variants of metalwork in the buildings of Antoni Gaudí, a Catalan architect and the pioneer of Spanish Modernism.
The building gates of Gaudi’s work, such as the main entrance to the Finca Miralles, the main gate of Casa Batlló, are impressive wrought iron examples of the European metalwork designs. The gate in Casa Milà in La Pedrera assigned to Josep Maria Jujol, another Catalan architect who worked in many of Gaudi’s famous projects, is one of the most beautiful iron gates in the world.
Gaudi also could create other metal works such as brass and bronze works to produce decorative designs like doorknobs and handles. The integrated sculptural constructions depicted Gaudi’s technical capability. He discovered the metalsmith and smelting techniques to put the delicate metallic pieces together.
Gaudi guided the professional artisans to work on his projects and comply with his expectations. He optimized the production process for each piece, dipping the hands and fingers of his personnel in clay to form an ergonomic cast-made mould and to ensure the human physical aspects in production.
Architectural metalwork designed in the Art Nouveau style displayed bizarre and dynamic forms inspired by the sinuous curves of the natural shape of flowers, stems and blossoms. These shapes with the same elegance and delicate details in nature weren’t geometrical, parallel or symmetrical. They were smooth and flowing and formed organically as the natural figures of trees and bushes, mountains and clouds.
An essential characteristic of Art Nouveau was using new materials like metal in architecture and Interior design. Also, metalwork was associated significantly in producing design products in decorative art fields and applied art.
At the time of Art Nouveau, the architects used widely wrought Iron in buildings for producing fences, decorative balconies, stair railings, gateways, and metallic elements in interior work.
Following the artistic style that took the name “New Art, ” the designers produced highly qualified metallic products in architecture and sculpture and fabricated interior objects such as lampshades, kitchen fixtures, and knob handles.
From the beginning of the 19th century, wrought Iron was replaced by cast iron because of the lower production costs. As iron had become more common, it was used widely for cooking utensils, stoves, grates, locks, hardware, and other household uses.
The high quality of porcelain, similar to the porcelain of China, was discovered about 1707 by Böttger, an alchemist, and Tschirnhaus, a physicist, the scientists and researchers in Meissen Porcelain factory in Dresden, Germany.
Later during the 18th century, each European country produced hard-paste porcelain. In this kind of porcelain, the hard-paste, named True Porcelain, differed from the soft-paste or the Artificial Porcelain. Hart-paste porcelain was more crack-resistant, most applied for hot liquids, and occasionally could be prepared for the second firing in which the glaze was fused. Conversely, the soft paste contained a small amount of clay, had fewer plastic characteristics and was difficult to shape. All European countries had their specific Neoclassical style and used both methods, but in Europe, the hard-paste became the primary porcelain production. Because of this progress, the prosperous class of European societies could consume Austrian, English, German and Italian porcelain.
Marco Polo brought porcelain to Europe and called it Porcellana. It was an Italian word for cowrie shell and an appropriate name for a delicate durable shiny object that seemed worthy as white gold. Europeans became fascinated by Chinese inventions such as porcelain pottery.
Primitive porcelain is the earliest porcelain in China during the Shang Dynasty. The Chinese developed their ancient skills to produce decorated coloured porcelain in the following centuries. The Europeans fell in love with these far east products and made great efforts to imitate the Chinese with the same delicacy and precision. It was a complicated task. Producing this fine-grained translucent material took great patience and expertise. Adding a small amount of the ingredients to its texture had caused cracks and breakage. The unevenness of clay, inconsistent thickness during the model making, and the high glazing temperatures made the process unstable. It wasn’t easy to produce porcelain with the certainty of the expected result.
The decorative style of Art Nouveau that flourished at the turn of the 20th century throughout Europe and the United States represented its fascinating designs in many genres of decorative art, including ceramic design and faience art. The pottery designers shaped dishware and vases with undulating asymmetrical lines influenced by the forms of flower stalks and buds, iris, arums and thistles and created curved porcelain objects based upon the natural shapes and forms. This new approach in art caused visual movement and dynamism in porcelain products and had long-standing popularity among art admirers.
Plateel is a Dutch word for a particular type of earthenware. This ceramic product in the Netherland had a motif painted on the pottery by a pottery painter before firing for the second time. The double-fired process had taken place in the pottery bakery.
The image below is a product of the Ram pottery factory in Arnhem, Netherlands. The pottery painters had created delicate floral patterns with watercolour techniques on unglazed white biscuit porcelain. The manufacturers fired the products once again directly after the paintings became visual. The factory glazed the pottery with enamel paint to reach an opaque appearance. The manual manufacture was expensive, and the price was high. Many products were put up for sale through the auctions in Amsterdam and other Dutch cities.
Plateelbakkerij (Pottery bakery) Ram was founded by several directors of Dutch museums and prominent Dutch artists in 1921. The name Ram (Aries) came from the Aries constellation and was selected by Theodoor Colenbrander, a Dutch architect and famous pottery designer. He thought of the brilliance of the stars formed by the mythological arie.
In the late 19th century, the artists of applied art design took inspiration for their work from the Arts and Crafts Movement. They created an elegant, new, dynamic style, the Young Art, the Art Nouveau, which stood against classical and traditional art. This unique manner of artistic expression, influenced by the beauty of Japanese woodblock prints, had tried to offer an inherent natural beauty to art. Artists of Art Nouveau took the organic floral and plant motifs to reveal their designs in delicate, curvy shapes with natural patterns. All the genres of applied art, especially glass art, metal art, jewellery, were included in this dominant movement, as also pottery and ceramics, which in these series of articles capture our attention today.
Émile Gallé was the famous glassmaker from France, the founder of the École de Nancy or Nancy School, a group of Art Nouveau artisans and designers working in Nancy, France at the turn of the 20th century. Gallé’s family members were glassware and ceramics merchants and manufacturers. As a young student, Émile Gallé studied philosophy, botany, sculpture and drawing and was later in charge of the entire management of the family glass industry in his 28th year. Émile Gallé expanded the business and hired 300 employees in the following years. His designers had some permissions and design options, but they were obliged to use curved and flowing natural shapes and follow the artistic rules of Art Nouveau. The designers of Gallé ‘s workshop were inspired by the plants and flowers and used them as models in their work.
Pottery and ceramics, what are the differences? We usually think that these are two separate processes and products. Do you know that pottery and ceramics are the same, made by shaping and then hardening the red sticky clay? Yes, It’s True. Moreover, pottery in Greek is ceramic.
But why clay is the best available and appropriate material for pottery? As a non-metallic fine-grained earth material, clay is malleable and proper for producing dishes, plates, bowls, jugs, and other tableware products.
The main types of pottery are earthenwares, stonewares, and porcelains. They are obtained from hot clay and have different characteristics and applications. Earthenwares are clay materials fired at relatively low temperatures than stonewares and porcelains. They are porous and must be glazed to become water proved. Stonewares possess a higher material density and are more durable due to the firing process of clay at higher temperatures. Stonewares have a stone look and a more natural appearance than the two other types. Porcelains are more durable materials supplied from firing refined clay at very high temperatures. Porcelains are shiny, white and translucent, but also too fragile. Therefore the quality of potteries depends on the clay’s purity and the temperature of the hardening process.
Applying nude human figures was a permanent tradition in art from Ancient Greek to the middle ages, also continuing in the Renaissance period. Subsequently, in the artistic movements as Art Nouveau and Art Deco, modelling female nudes had more artistic intent than erotic. Illustrating a nude model was, and still is, one of the usual art educative methods for apprentices of art to develop their sense of observation and proportion. François-Rupert Carabin is one of the sculptors in Modern history who drew his inspirations from nude body themes. For a period in his life, he attended dissection halls of the Medicine Faculty for anatomy’s studies of the human body. Like Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, one of his contemporaries, he also visited cabarets and café’s to sketch the brothels, study the prostitutes’ photographic images, and follow them as a subject model. His nude art is aesthetically valued and stunning.
François-Rupert Carabin was a French medal maker, goldsmith, woodcarver and furniture designer. He worked with various materials such as clay, ceramics, bronze and wood. As a brilliant furniture decorator, he cut deep grooves on wood, used sculpted elements attached to the plane surfaces and materialized raised forms above the solid wooden backgrounds. His nude figures and the formed human limbs as integral parts of his designs conjoined his furniture components. They were applied as handles and pedestals of his chairs and cabinets.
Émile Gallé was a significant designer of Art Nouveau and a leading figure in creating interior pieces, glassware, ceramics and pottery. As a passionate artist, he never lost his inspiration and didn’t surrender to the power establishments. He gradually formed his radical attitudes, accomplished his ideas in cooperation with other European artists, and held on to the concept of the unity of art, crystallized in various types of design. Without copying those artistic elements from the past, the architects, jewellers, drapery creators, glassworkers and furniture designers walked hand in hand to pass through the most virulent criticism of their time. So did Émile Gallé and his colleagues. They moved without doubt deliberately in the new art direction.
It is fascinating to know that Émile Gallé had studied natural science. As a skilled botanist, he used his expertise in French Flora to produce decorative art. His inspiration was derived from the organic shapes of plants and flowers, and he used them in an asymmetric construct.
The significant designer of Art nouveau furniture Émile Gallé, was also a leading figure in other applied arts. He used natural forms and undulating patterns to produce flat panels for cabinets and furniture. At that time, the Arts and Crafts movement and the Japanese art principles influenced many artists. They were motivated to use delicate shapes in woodworking and materials such as walnut, rosewood, pearwood and teak.
The interaction between design and manufacturing unites the aesthetics features and the consumer needs. Émile Gallé organized a prosperous business that resulted in broader international success. He trained his designers, managed three hundred employees, manufactured glass and faience glazed ceramic ware and produced exquisite furniture. His company gained artistic recognition and grand prizes in the European expositions and expanded its activities with retailing in cities such as Paris, London and Frankfurt am Main.
Are you fascinated by the image of this exquisite furniture piece? We shall concentrate today on Maison Losseau, a private Belgium house renewed in the late 19th century and became in the later years a cultural heritage treasure and a historical centre of literature.
A group of proficient architects and decorators assisted renovation project of the house for more than ten years. Paul Saintenoy, the Belgian architect, Henri and Louis Sauvage, the French designers, The Daum family who were the most prominent glassworkers of that time, Amalric Walter, a glass artist and the designers of Émile Gallé’s workshops, all contributed to this project.
The building had been inherited from Charles Lasseau to his son Léon, an intellectual lawyer from Mons, Belgium. His son had devoted the house to cultural activities and artistic affairs. Passionate about literature and numerous scientific issues, he established a library of more than 100,000 books and organized frequently conferences and ceremonies for humanitarian programs.
At the beginning of the 19th century, before the Art nouveau period, the lack of art creativity led to eclecticism. Reproduction of the diverse art traditions of the Greek and Italian Renaissance and the use of artistic characteristics of previous centuries were generally usual. Loving imitated old features and the worthless gewgaw was conventional in the creative affairs. At that time, the useless counterfeits were superior to the innovative artistic designs.
The artists whose ideas were beyond the art rules and those who did not conform to art standards were forced to leave their occupation or became obliged to work in the established mainstream.
In this series of articles, you can get a good idea of the various topics about Art Nouveau furniture design, particularly the works of Émile Gallé and François-Rupert Carabin.
Surely you have heard about Émile Gallé, one of the artists of the Art Nouveau movement. He was the founder of the École de Nancy, or the Nancy School, and worked with Louis Majorelle, another famous French decorator and furniture designer. They worked closely with other artists of crafts, glassware and textile artisans.
The peacock symbolized nobleness, status and wealth in art history. Moreover, it was a symbolic icon of protection and guidance, and it served as a sign of dignity and confidence in ancient cultures.
During the previous two centuries and throughout the historical-artistic presence of the peacock, the stylish creature has been used frequently in numerous applied arts. This crested pheasant has also appeared in René Lalique artwork extensively.
Calouste Gulbenkian acquired the peacock corsage ornament from René Lalique. It is one of the most spectacular pieces of jewellery ever created in the period of Art Nouveau. Gulbenkian was a Western businessman of Armenian origin, and as a successful, wealthy expert, he constantly appreciated Lalique’s work and commissioned many of the artist’s projects.
The cabochon stone, shaped by oval opals, attached evenly to the semi-circular jewel and created a relaxed symmetric look by placing an enormous peacock in the centre.
The Khalili Museum is well-known for its Islamic Art Collection includes a few of Rene Lalique’s pieces. Lalique, the French industrial designer (1860 – 1945), utilized superior techniques with ingenious creativity. He refused the dominant use of diamonds in jewellery and terminated the hegemony of precious stones in ornamental artwork. Generally, he banned the recreated reused historical styles, the so-called Historicism, in his designs.
Although this corsage ornament made in 1905 has a symmetrical structure and opposing ends, it features a curved design and undulated delicate texture inspired by nature, similar to other Art Nouveau jewels.
The piece outlines the shape of an insect with two delicate, slender forewings formed by matt semi-opaque enamel.
The double central ellipses made by shiny green peridot stone shows the thorax and the abdomen as the biological organs of the insect. The two ruby eye compounds with the clay-coloured head balance the open wings on both sides. The forewings in champlevé compartments include golden branching routes and are filled with rose-gold low saturated coloured enamel.
The dragonfly brooch is a delicate, designed piece of René Lalique’s jewellery and one of the most famous ornaments of the Art Nouveau era.
This decorative jewel, dated from 1903, was acquired by Calouste Gulbenkian from René Lalique. Gulbenkian was a British- Armenian businessman, a great art collector and a significant supporter of René Lalique’s artwork, who commissioned many of his projects, including this dragonfly brooch.
The ancient brooches are chronological indicators. Generally, the art experts estimate the production date of the pins as this jewellery category adorned the opulent dresses of many historical characters in the past centuries.
It is not difficult to detect the type of design. We can undoubtedly recognize its style, which promptly refers to the Art Nouveau period with its flowing curved shape and the female silhouette.
In the mid-to-late 19th century and the Victorian style, the brooches had long pins, enriched by expensive gold spines, decorated with valuable stones like diamonds and pearls and used as clothes fasteners by dresses. The extended length of the pin kept the thicker textile pieces together and secured them in place. However, in the later years by Art Nouveau style, the jewellers attached the non-precious stones to the brooches and produced them as clasp fastenings for dresses and other clothing like jackets, sweaters and even hats.
Tiffany & Co., the American luxury products firm, produced circa 1900 the Iris Corsage Ornament, an exquisite spectacular gem of the Art Nouveau period.
This splendid ornamental jewel is kept in the Walters Art Museum of Baltimore, United States and made of blue sapphire extracted from the Montana rocks. Montana got an unofficial nickname as “The Treasure State”, due to its mineral resources, mainly because of the precious stone of sapphire that had become increasingly popular among Europeans.
Like many other Art Nouveau ornaments, the corsage is inspired by the curved whiplash lines of nature and, in this case, primarily by the floral fan shape of the iris flower. The symmetrical six lobed corolla segments as three upright petals curved at the top and three lower petals hanging down are made from facetted blue sapphires.
The jewel has a long and slender stem in gold and three delicate leaves made of green demantoid garnet. The shiny yellow signals and the white petal veins of the iris are part of the glistening design. Other gemstones such as diamonds, topaz, gold alloys, and platinum increase the brightness of this charming object.
I shall mention a few of Art Nouveau’s jewellery artists in this topic, such as Alphonse Fouquet and René Lalique, and Georg Jensen.
Alphonse Fouquet, a prominent 19th-century Parisian jeweller, was famous because of his extensive use of enamel and coloured stone. He had disapproved the works of his contemporaries work in the same industry but had said about Lalique: “Till now, I didn’t know any jewellery designers, but now, here we have one!”
The famous French Industrial designer of the Art Nouveau’s period, René Lalique, had extensive skills and expertise in glass art, jewellery and the watch industry. He also produced decorative art products such as crystal vases, chandeliers and decorative hoods. During his youth, he put a lot of effort to acquire the knowledge required for the delicate techniques of applied art.
Lalique had apprenticed to Louis Aucoc, the Parisian Art Nouveau jeweller and goldsmith, and continued his work as a freelance artist with the famous Jewel factory, Cartier. Lalique cooperated later with the Maison de l’Art Nouveau; an art gallery opened in Paris by the Franco-German art dealer Siegfried Bing. A British-Armenian businessman Calouste Gulbenkian gathered an extensive art collection and commissioned many of René Lalique’s work due to his fortune.
Comparing the Casa Batlló building designed by Antoni Gaudí with the cellular tissues in an organism can provide us with a harmonized and premeditated setting between the human residence and its natural surroundings.
The building is located in Passeig de Gràcia, a magnificent boulevard in the centre of Barcelona and one of the most prestigious avenues of Spain. This area includes luxurious shopping and business buildings and the headquarters of the big banking institutions.
Gaudi was the leading architect of the emerged Modernisme in Catalonia, Spain, who used floral and organic forms in his architectural designs. He integrated the applied art of stained glass, wrought iron, ceramics and carpentry into his building designs.
The ground floor’s façade consists of five sandstone columns framed four arches of the building entrance. On the first floor, the six fine sculptural columns support the organic shaped curvy stone facade and the stained, glazed oval openings behind them.
Casa Milà(La Pedrera), the Catalan modernist building in Barcelona, has an unusual but stylish appearance that mimics a large carved rock. La Pedrera, in Spanish, literally means “stone quarry”. Roser Segimón and his wife Pere Milà, from the leading upper-class members of Spain and the first owners of the building, commissioned Anthony Gaudi in 1905 to build apartments for the rent and in part for their residence.
The self-supporting facade of La Pedrera, enables large openings and provides more light into the building. Moreover, it permits the relocations of the internal walls and the privilege of modifying the interior layout readily. The undulating stony building frontage with the twisting wrought-iron balconies includes organic motifs inspired by the natural shapes of clouds, waves, hills and mountains.
Four apartments on each floor supply a view on the main facade and are organized around the large inner courtyards, allowing lighting and ventilation for all rooms. The facades of two huge internal patios deserve the same significance as the exterior facades. Both interior and exterior facades incorporate ornamental forms and naturalistic patterns.
Art Nouveau became fashionable in various civilizations in the last half of the nineteenth century, especially in applied arts and architecture. But everywhere, it was adapted to the cultural effects of the place and emerged with its unique indigenous characteristics. Antoni Gaudi, best considered the pioneer of Spanish Art Nouveau, took advantage of three influential forces. These three significant factors were his artistic approach, his vigorous religious ideology, and his local cultural tradition within the features of Catalan nature. The next step was integrating those forces with his imaginative, poetic creations in a contemporary concept and an innovative, stylish framework.
Antoni Gaudi hadn’t perfect health as a child and suffered from rheumatism. He had to spend most of his childhood in the countryside, away from the chaos and bustling city life. Close to nature and fascinated by its beauty of organic patterns and textures, he used those natural themes in his designs when he started later his artistic career.
The highlights of his works are Parque Güell; Casa Batlló; Casa Mila; Casa Vicens and La Sagrada Familia. Here I will briefly mention some particulars about his architectural designs.
Toulouse-Lautrec was a Post-Impressionist painter, lithographer, caricaturist and illustrator between 1880-1901.
Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa was a long name for Lautrec that was born in the French upper-class aristocracy. Even Lautrec could have been entitled “Comte”, which was the same as Count, an honourable high-ranked title by the elite societies of the 19th century. But for him, this privilege and the entitlement counted for nothing who painted cafés and brothel life. He had deep sympathy for the lower social classes. Lautrec found an affinity with miserable prostitutes and weak men who negligently had stepped beyond social morals, taking refuge in alcohol and visiting the brothels. In his opinion, the girls in the brothels were not dolls but inspiring human beings he sympathised with and felt compassion for them. He saw those women as equals and was interested in their unconventional lifestyle and anarchic spirits.
As a consequence of Lautrec’s behaviour, his uncle burned his works. His father deprived him of all rights to his inheritance and was unhappy that Lautrec couldn’t protect their heritage and confirm their tradition and lifestyle. However, his mother, who was divorced from his father, unlike his father, encouraged her son’s early enthusiasm for art and continued supporting him throughout his whole career.
Lautrec had severe disability and health problems because of the consanguineous marriage of his parents. Due to his little legs caused by the congenital bone disorder, he was physically unable to participate in the everyday activities of his peers and turned soon to paint. His short stature and abnormal physical appearance somehow affected his relationships with women.
Studying the personal life of Wassily Kandinsky is fascinating, just much as exploring his artwork. Before considering him as an artist, he was a genius, multi-talented person with several abilities and high outstanding expertise.
Wassily Kandinsky was born in a family with an aristocratic background. He was a jurist, writer, art theorist, academic lecturer, musician, and painter. Later, he became the founder of the Blue Riders’ art movement and selected as the president of European art associations.
Perhaps among the modern art painters, like Kandinsky, none became involved with various aspects of life and didn’t deal with multiplicities and diversities as he did. He emigrated a lot. At the age of 30, he left Russia for Munich, returned to Russia about seven years later, re-emigrated again and stayed in Germany for ten years. When the German government prevented his activities, he left Germany and settled in France for the last period of his life.
Now you can imagine how much these relocations and changes affected his life. Let me give you more examples of this painter life’s instability. Kandinsky had two Russian marriages and a relationship between those married periods with Gabriele Münter, the German avant-garde artist. Furthermore, many significant historical, social transformations took place in his artistic life. He experienced the Soviet Revolution and World War I, which affected his artistic career by substantial political impact. Over and above, one of his rare characteristics is that he attained high degrees in both East and West academic professions despite cultural differences.
Matisse’s early life was not so exceptional. He grew up in an ordinary but wealthy family of grain merchants with little interest in art, who wished their son to be a court clerk. Matisse abandoned his parent’s choice, disappointed his father and began focusing on artwork at twenty-one. Initially, he followed his artistic creation passionately but couldn’t take care of his family for a long time, while his wife was obliged to open a dress shop and struggled to make ends meet.
Matisse’s breakthrough was joining the French Fauvism’s movement. He started using bright and expressive colours that replaced natural tints, Impressed by Van Goch’s work and understood the innovative Vincent’s colour theory, which impacted his works and had stylistically changed his techniques. After the artistic societies recognized him as a fauvist artist, his financial position improved.
Landscape and still life, human figures and portraits, were the themes of Matisse’s work. He displayed them as his favourite subjects with bold and simplified forms, supported by geometrical and robust backgrounds. His volumic paintings fragmented by solid sculptural shapes and heavy contours defined few shadows and fewer details. The union of shocking colours and brute lines surprised his viewers and made him one of the greatest Postimpressionists of modern art.
Pablo Picasso was born in Malaga, Southern Spain, in 1881 and grew up in an artistic environment, which stimulated him to paint. Following his father’s instructions, an art professor, the young Pablo, redrew great painters’ masterpieces with the conventional methods. He passed the School of Fine Arts entrance exam in Barcelona and enrolled in advanced classes at a young age. The father and son frequently disagreed as they argued about their different artistic visions. Pablo’s conflicting views with his early classical studies caused him to leave San Fernando Academia, one of the most prominent educational and artistic centres of that time.Critics classify Picasso’s work in several periods. The blue period (1901-1904) was Pablo’s joyless interval with the dominant use of blue and blue-green colours. In these paintings, miserable characters such as prostitutes, beggars and blind men perform sober themes, dramatized by bluish backgrounds. Picasso had been affected by the suicide of one of his friends during this period.
Paul Cézanne was born in 1839 and grew up in a wealthy religious family. His father, the co-founder of a banking firm, wished to leave the family’s financial responsibility to his son. His mother gave him confidence and courage and supported him in his views. Both mother and son persuaded his father to allow the young Cézanne to study painting and establish an artistic career. On the other hand, to satisfy his father, Cézanne started Law School but was later motivated by Émile Zola, a prominent novelist, to be an artist. Therefore he decided to pursue his creative profession. Zola’s influence on him was so significant that Cézanne could return to the legal and financial affairs as expected without his efforts.
Paris Salon from the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris rejected Cézanne’s work in 1864 and continued refusing his works for several years. A French Newspaper described how spectators humiliated his works at the exhibition. Even he was dishonoured and received offensive messages to leave Aix, his place of residence. The pain of social rejection made Cézanne’s behaviour harsh. Most often, he was distressed, confused and promptly became depressed. His intense sensitivity prevented him from extending his network among the creative societies. However, his gracious relationship with the prominent artists and his associations with art communities continued.
Gauguin and other painters such as Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh and Georges Seurat formed the Post-Impressionist movement by disassociating with the natural forms and relying upon their artistic memories and emotional experiences. Furthermore, they outlined their dreamy mythological imaginations by spiritual and symbolic icons. Like Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh, many of them, unappreciated and frustrated, went through a difficult path to present their art and only became recognized after their death. It is not absurd that Gauguin and van Gogh took refuge and approached each other to relieve their sadness and disillusionment due to the rejections of their work by the artistic societies. They migrated from where they were active to generate their style far from constraints and pressures and shape their unconventional individualism. However, the stresses became unbearable for them. Their extreme sensitivity and the unpleasant conditions they encountered damaged their relationship. After this broken friendship and the catastrophic consequences of van Gogh’s health, he was hospitalized and later lasted in a monastery for his manic outbursts. Reciprocally, two years later, because of his disappointments and the lack of sympathy in the French artistic climate, Gauguin travelled to Tahiti to his next and final destination.
Renoir was from a family of craftworkers. His singing’s talent in the Church’s Choir of his birthplace was not encouraged by his parents as they guided their children to the same path they followed, to be skilled artisans. His family sent him to a porcelain factory to learn ceramic forming techniques. He was fascinated by the work of Camille Pissarro and Edouard Manet and visited the Louvre galleries frequently. Finally, he found his way, not in handwork but painting. He had a strong empathy with other painters who sought freedom in style, and he joined in 1874 the first exhibition of Impressionists.
His paintings, the impressionist snapshots of real-life, were pleasant subjects and demonstrated delightful occasions with no seriousness or anxiety. Renoir had celebrated beauty and joy by the highlighted reflections of details in his paintings. Flowers, children, calm landscapes, and female elegance were the primary subjects of his works. He said once: “Why art shouldn’t be beautiful, while we face so much unpleasantness in our troubled life”?
As an impressionist, Claude Monet, 1840-1926, tended to fade out the details, blur the outlines and apply flowing, hazy performance. His works look calm, unfinished and indistinct, which lead us to a fanciful dreamy outcome.
Using colours without assigning them to contours was one of Monet’s priorities. He rejected to use pure black colour and abandoned dark backgrounds. As well as for shadows, he combined black with blue to implement dark purple, which functioned as a black shadow. By mixing the dark colours, he created murky effects instead of black. His refusal to use black had been so ascertained that his friends avoided the black coffin in his death funeral and covered him with flowered casket cloth, regarding Claude’s negative sensitivity to deal with dark colours.
Boudin, the French landscape painter, met young Monet in a shop that sold his early works. He offered to take Monet to the countryside for painting lessons. Monet first refused politely but later found no excuse to reject and accompanied the painter, letting Boudin educate him. At that event, he became acquainted with the “En Plein Air” style to paint outdoors and gradually worked outside on large scale canvases which he had subsequently completed the paintings in his studio.
Gustav Klimt was very successful in 1900-1918, described as Klimt’s “Golden Phase”. His gold technique was acquired when his father was a gold engraver. The family of the low-paid goldsmith had a difficult life as immigrants and lived in relative poverty. When he was young and graduated from Vienna’s art school, there was a strong demand for architectural paintings, interior works and decorative ornaments. Klimt and his talented brothers were commissioned to decorate theatres and other large public building projects of the Austrian Empire. After completing those projects, he became a professional interior mural painter using an extraordinary style with a keen eye for details.
Klimt reached fame and success as a mural painter. However, at the same time, he received harsh criticism from the religious, even artistic societies and those who were surprised by his unconventional and radical themes. Klimt’s reaction to those critics resulted in a career turning point, ignoring the fundamental customary principles. Schiller’s quote, “If you cannot please everyone with your actions and your art, you should satisfy a few”, is shown in the figure of Nuda Veritas, or “Naked Truth”, painted by him in 1899. This painting reflects the same mentality by Klimt, as his favourite German poet Schiller meant in those words. Klimt cloistered himself and kept his faith to survive only with his artistic beliefs.
Ferdinand Hodler had a troubled childhood as he lost his father and two younger brothers to tuberculosis. Unfortunately, her mother died a few years later from the same disease after establishing a new life and remarrying a decorative painter. In the absence of his mother, his stepfather used him in his work as a labourer. But as Ferdinand grew up, he looked for a better environment to widen his artistic proficiency. He travelled to Geneva and met Menn, a Swiss Painter who helped him orient his works to German and Italian artistic styles.
His family’s loss caused Hodler to focus on death’s horrific impact, which had overshadowed the painter’s merciless destiny. He was fascinated by the crucifixion of Christ, immersed in thoughts of suffering, mental distress, and severe illness. Gradually the theme of death became one of his primary subjects of work.
It was difficult for Hodler to make a living from his works. His painting “Night” failed to survive in Geneva’s Beaux-Arts exhibition. After that withdrawn from the exhibition, ignored and unrecognized by the critics, he approached Salon in Paris to exhibit “Night” and once again tried his luck among French artistic society. He took advantage of controversial artistic discussions and disagreements and attracted many artists such as French sculptor Rodin and the famous mural painter Chavannes.
Egon Schiele, an Austrian artist who painted during 1907-1918, was greatly displeased about the conservative art rules. The famous symbolist painter Gustav Klimt, who helped the junior radical artists with their new contemporary styles, met him during the Vienna Secession cooperations and began a professional, sustainable relationship with the young Schiele.
Schiele’s painting was branded as pornography as a young artist and caused many problems. He was forced to leave his residence and faced allegations that led to his arrest and imprisonment.
His fearless exploring of twisted bodies and nude shapes, his guiltless view of beauty and the use of innocent elements of natural sexuality made him a progressive and independent painter of his time.
If we pay attention to most of his works, we see that he had used many warm colours, orange, brown, and cream, whether on figurative shapes or the background. Most of Schiele’s coloured paintings include shades of orange or analogous brown. Indeed, he reached more stabilised effects by these earth colours and brought naturalism closer to his art.
August Macke was born in Germany and raised in a family of building contractors with no artistic background. His distinguished, prestigious career ended with his death in World War I, and he died at a young age. He was one of the founders of the Blue Rider’s movement.
In the early 20th century, a transition in expressionism occurred, which remarkably affected those years’ artistic movements. The impact of this transition appeared in Fauvism and the Blue Riders’ campaign. The “Blue Riders’ “ painters learned a lot from the Fauvists. They broke up with the sentimental expressions in the modernist movement and brought more rational, wise elements to expressionism.
The painters such as August Macke, Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc distinguished themselves from the New Association of Artists in Munich by organizing the first exhibition as the creators of the Blue Riders movement. But their activity was not last very long, actually from 1911- 1914. However, their efforts have influenced the evolution of modern art.