Lalique

Jessica Hodge. Indbundet, 144 sider i god stand. By any standards, Rene Lalique was an enormously talented and versatile man. However, it was in the area of jewelry design and glasswork that Lalique's greatest passion lay and where he would leave his most lasting gift. At sixteen he got his first feel for jewelry work while apprenticed to a Paris jeweler before moving to London's Sydenham College in 1878, where he studied for two years. After returning home and taking over a small workshop in Paris, Lalique began designing pieces for the actress Sarah Bernhardt for use in her stage productions. In theater, the artist was no longer tied to conventional demands and as a result began to use more unusual materials such as glass, semiprecious stones, and less expensive metals. Lalique's pieces were stunning and unique. But with fame, came imitators and the genius became secretive. To this day, the composition of the pearly opalescent glass, which became one of his trademarks, remains a mystery. To defy those who copied him, Lalique sought new creative outlets and settled on a glassworks studio, in 1909, where he began experimenting with pate-de-verre and cire perdue in his doors and lampshades. Once a pioneer of Art Nouveau, Lalique had effortlessly entered the world of Art Deco, a genre in which squares and rectangles replaced the circular and linear. Illustrated with a wealth of vivid photographs, Lalique beautifully presents a rich selection of the pieces created throughout the career of One of the world's most ingenious artists.