A French Bleeding Heart’ Enameled Cameo Glass Vase by Muller Frères

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A French Bleeding Heart’ Enameled Cameo Glass Vase by Muller Frères

About the Item

A French cameo glass "Coeur de Jeanette" vase by Muller Freres. Circa 1900. Muller Frères displays an incredible intellectual unity between this vase's design and it's literary title. The "Coeur de Jeanette" was an Alsatian colloquialism for the Bleeding Heart flower. Referring to a jewelry form comprised of a Latin cross suspended from a bleeding heart, newly working young girls across Northern France would use four months of pay to make their first autonomous purchase. Crucially the purchase was made on the titular Fête de la Saint-Jean. The "Coeur de Jeannette" represented a rite of passage for young Alsatian girls, and one that is perfectly expressed by this vase's crepuscular setting. Just as twilight denotes the border between day and night, the Fête de la Saint-Jean marked the border between girlhood and womanhood. The "Coeur de Jeanette" is an inverted baluster shaped vase that has been blown, cased, cameo-cut, wheel engraved, and enameled. The vase has a lipless rim and a splayed firing foot. A shell of opalescent glass was blown onto a core of non-lead colorless glass. The opalescent glass gives the interior a captivating rainbow iridescence that is brought out under reflected light. The gather was subsequently marvered and cased in a layer of silver nitrate amber glass, an intercalaire layer of translucent white glass and finished with a layer of translucent aubergine glass. The intercalaire layer has a spatter of powdered glass inclusions that radiates from the base to the rim. The powdered glass inclusions come in two colors: translucent fuschia pink and opaque periwinkle. The opaque periwinkle serves as a reprise to the milky color of the vase's opalescent glass interior. The translucent aubergine glass was deeply carved, giving the veins and leaf margins the highest relief. This technique perfectly captures the transmitted light that affects leaves with frontal views and upward-facing planes. Miniscule bubbles were created on the surface of the translucent white layer by sprinkling bistre colored glass inclusions on the surface while the gather was still in a semi-molten state. In the process of blowing the vase, the base was subtly twisted clockwise from the foot, giving the viewer a sensation of rising air. Two racemes of foreground blooms were enameled in two layers. For the normal cultivars, the fuschia pink of the powdered inclusions are reprised as a layer atop the cream colored enamel, applied thickly or thinly depending on the petal's venation, with a brush and needle. For the white "Alba" cultivar, a variation on the "grisaille" technique was used. The shadows of the petal were modeled by exposing the aubergine glass underneath. A layer of translucent "jaune d'antimoine" (antimony yellow) enamel was applied, reflecting the light of the amber colored sky. Latent in the piece is the repeated graduation of pictorial motifs, namely the graduation of the magnitude of blooms on each flower raceme, the illusion of depth created by racemes of different sizes and the graduation of the edges of the leaves towards the base and foot. The softness of the edges serve to mimic human vision in crepuscular settings. Masses become unified in tone while backlit individual objects still retain some sharpness as they silhouette against the flaxen twilight. References: Kelly, Barbara L. 2008. French music, culture, and national identity: 1870-1939. Rochester: University of Rochester Press. Baudoin, Marcel & Lacoulomere, Georges., Le Coeur Vendéen, Société d'Anthropologie de Paris, 1903 Signed, ''MULLER FRES LUNÉVILLE''. (MG #17749)

Creator:
Muller Frères (Maker)
Dimensions:
Height: 11 in (27.94 cm)Diameter: 3.82 in (9.71 cm)
Style:
Art Nouveau (Of the Period)
Materials and Techniques:
Art Glass
Place of Origin:
France
Period:
1900-1909
Date of Manufacture:
circa 1900
Condition:
Seller Location:
New York, NY
Reference Number:
Seller: G177491stDibs: LU88546033613

Shop All Muller Frères

Muller Frères

Muller Frères was a family-owned glassworks that is best known for its striking designs produced in the Art Deco and Art Nouveau styles. The French company’s chandeliers, vases, lamps and other glass pieces created in the latter style — which were largely characterized by elegantly crafted natural-world motifs and subtle, organic forms — are highly sought after and make for distinctive additions to any space.

Henri Muller opened the company with four of his brothers in Lunéville, during a time that saw the modernizing Art Nouveau movement in the decorative arts develop countrywide as well as in Britain. It quickly became a dominant aesthetic style in Western Europe and the United States. Muller’s sister and an additional three brothers later joined the business.

The Muller family custom-ordered glass blanks from a glassworks near Nancy. The brothers learned about glass design from Émile Gallé, an innovative pioneer in glass artistry who would become a leading light of Art Nouveau. The style, which spanned furniture, architecture, jewelry and graphic design — can be easily identified by its lush, flowing forms suggested by flowers and plants, as well as the lissome tendrils of sea life. The earliest works by Muller Frères, which were often crafted in cameo glass, are strongly demonstrative of Gallé’s style and influence.

After a period that saw a pause in production owing to World War I, the company saw considerable success.

Muller Frères employed several hundred people at its commercial peak, when the Art Deco style of the 1920s, which was brought to international attention at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris, was popularized by the likes of René Lalique, Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann and Jules Leleu. Authentic Muller Frères Art Deco sconces and pendants and hanging lamps featured sculptural wrought iron frames and saw an integration of high-polished nickel plating, bronze, frosted glass and silver leaf.

Find antique Muller Frères lighting, decorative objects and serveware on 1stDibs.