Case for three wine glasses

This wooden, silk-lined lidded box, designed to store three wine glasses, was produced for René Lalique (1860-1945). The Sainsbury Centre Collection has six Lalique wine glasses in total and two storage boxes.

Generous in size with a wide rim, the bowl of the wineglass is supported by a thick, cylindrical stem and circular foot. Three of the six glasses in the Sainsbury Centre Collection have been engraved with the maker’s mark, ‘Lalique’.

The glass is blow moulded with etched details, and decorated with stylised vines in sunken relief (intaglio). Tendrils and round berries, possibly grapes, scroll around the bowl and foot of the glass, and are picked out in golden brown enamel or stain. Densely thatched vines criss-cross the surface of the goblet’s stem, turning this section of the glass semi-opaque.

Lalique is known for his jewellery and glassware in the Art Nouveau and Art Deco styles. While apprenticed at a young age to the goldsmith, Louis Aucoc, Lalique attended evening classes at the École des Arts Décoratifs, Paris. (1874-1876) [1] He continued his education in London at the Sydenham College at the Crystal Palace (1878-1880). [2]

Lalique excelled as a jewellery designer and branched into glass making later in his career. Early glass commissions from Françoise Coty for perfume bottles began in 1908; however, at this time, Lalique’s designs were produced by other glass manufacturers. [3]

Encouraged by these commissions, Lalique rented the Compagnie Générale d’Éléctricité glassworks at Combs-la-Ville near Fountainbleau in 1908, before acquiring this property in 1913 [4]. After the First World War (1914-1918), in 1921, Lalique bought a new factory in WIngen-sur-Moder in the Alsace region of, France, and expanded his glass production. [5]

Vanessa Tothill, January 2021

[1] Amanda Geitner and Emma Hazell, ed., The Anderson Collection of Art Nouveau (Norwich: Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, 2003), p. 134.

[2] Geitner, p. 134.

[3] https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O2687/cyclamen-scent-bottle-lalique-rene-jules/ [accessed 19 November 2020]

[4] Geitner, p. 134; https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O2687/cyclamen-scent-bottle-lalique-rene-jules/ [accessed 19 November 2020]

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