René Lalique

René Lalique

Rene Lalique was born a rural 19th century man in a pre-industrialized Europe. It was a time before light bulbs, and telephones, before automobiles and washing machines and electricity. But by the time of his death in 1945 at the dawn of the atomic age, he would have completed two careers spanning two different centuries. In 1900 at the age of 40, he was the most celebrated jeweler in the world and an art nouveau artist and designer of magnificent proportions. But by 1925 at the height of the art deco era he was the most celebrated glassmaker in the world. In between Lalique would leave his contemporaries behind as he turned from creating unique jewelry and objects d'art, to the mass production of innovative and usable art glass. He brought glass into the home of everyday people where it had never been before, and he worked out the industrial techniques to mass produce his useful art glass objects on a scale and cost to complement the spreading industrial revolution and resulting worldwide appetite for his products.

Lalique is remembered for his jewelry and his glass. But his greatest accomplishments were born in his recognition of the changing world in which he lived. His life spanned the entire period from the Civil War to World War II and as his world changed, so did Lalique. His amazing turn of careers and fields put him in the forefront of the new mass production. He was a jeweler, he was a glassmaker, he was an artist. But his great accomplishment was to combine those talents with foresight and innovation to not just serve markets, but to create them. In the process, Lalique would become a world class industrialist with an industrial ability on par with any other of his rich talents and achievements.

The artist, the designer, the jeweler, the innovator, the glassmaker, the industrialist, the visionary! This is his story.

Jewelry

Born Rene Jules Lalique in 1860, in the small village of Ay, in the Marne region of France (the former Champagne Province), Rene Lalique would rise to the top of many fields before his long career would end with his death in 1945.

When Rene Lalique was just two years old, his family moved to the suburbs of Paris. There Lalique eventually went to school at the Lycee Turgot. After the death of Rene Lalique's father in 1876 when Rene Lalique was 16 years old, Rene Lalique became apprenticed to the jeweler Louis Aucoc. Aucoc was among the leading jewelers working in Paris at the time, and this provided a perfect opportunity for the young Rene Lalique to learn jewelry production and design from the ground up. While working for Aucoc, Lalique also studied at the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs in Paris. In 1878 he attended college in Sydenham England (now part of greater London), and returned to France in 1880. Upon his return to Paris, he worked designing jewelry for a relative, M. Vuilleret. Rene Lalique also spent time studying under the sculpture Justin Lequien at the Ecole Bernard Palissy. By 1881, Lalique was working as a freelance designer for many French jewelry firms, which came to include Cartier and Boucheron among others, and also for a growing list of private clients. By 1886 he had begun operations at his own workshop in Paris, the former workshop of Jules Destape. This is also the year that Rene Lalique married his first wife, Marie-Louis Lambert (some reports place their wedding in 1887). They would have one child born in 1888, a daughter named Georgette, who died in 1910. The couple were divorced in 1898, but may have been legally separated since 1893.

In 1890, Rene Lalique opened a new jewelry shop in the fashionable Opera district at 20 Rue Therese in Paris. Lalique also met his second wife, the daughter of the sculpture Auguste Ledru, Augustine-Alice Ledru in the same year. The ensuing time spent working at and living above this new shop, saw the creation of some of Rene Lalique's most celebrated jewelry designs, as well as his experimentation with, and increasing use of glass.

Lalique's primary jewelry design motif was the natural world. He was influenced not just by the natural world of the French countryside, but also Japanese natural world art motifs as well. And he incorporated into his jewelry many materials not widely used in his time for high end jewelry including glass, horn, pearls, semi-precious stones, enamel, and ivory. He only used the typical valuable gemstones of the period for what they brought to the piece artistically and not for their value as gems. Therefore his Lalique jewelry creations were not just holders for high value stones, they were artwork in their own right, creating a worldwide interest and a huge demand.

In 1892, Suzanne, Rene Lalique's first child with Augustine-Alice Ledru, was born. By the mid 1890's. Rene Lalique was a notable figure in the world of jewelry and fashion in Paris. He was designing jewelry for his famous patron, Sarah Bernhardt, he exhibited at the Salon of 1895, and his Lalique jewelry could be found at such leading places as the store of Siegfried Bing, the Maison de l'art Nouveau. In 1897 Lalique received first prize at the Salon in Paris, where he exhibited ivory and horn hair combs. This same year he was also awarded the Croix de la Legion d'Honneur for the jewelry he exhibited at the World's Fair in Brussels. By 1900, at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, Rene Lalique jewelry was a sensation with the roughly 50 million visitors to the Exposition. But he exhibited not just jewelry, but also objects d'art made using bronze, ivory, and glass. By the end of 1900, Rene Lalique was recognized as the premiere jeweler of his day, and as a decorative artist of the highest order by both the public and his contemporaries.

Augustine-Alice's second child, Marc was also born in 1900. Rene and Augustine-Alice were married in 1902. She would pass away only 7 years later at the age of 39.

1904 saw Rene Lalique exhibit at the World's Fair in St. Louis, and also saw the death of Emile Galle, one of the greatest glassmakers in the world, and the man who in 1897 had called Rene Lalique "the inventor of modern jewelry". Unfortunately, Galle would not live to see what Lalique would accomplish in the design and manufacture of glass.

In 1907 Lalique had a son by the name of Rene Le Mesnil with a French woman he met in London in the period 1904-1905. Mr. Mesnil is listed by the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris as the donor in 1960 of the famous brooch known as The Kiss which you can read about at the linked article. This brooch dates from about 1905 and carries a French language inscription which translates in English as follows: I dream of kisses which last forever!

Glass

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