Gardner, Philippe — Emile Galle

New York, Rizzoli, 1979. Softcover. Tan illustrated wraps with black lettering, 167 pp. Numerous bw and color illustrations. "The extravagant elegance of the fin-de-siecle left its most durable legacy in the field of the applied arts, and the name of Emile Galle ranks with those of Mucha, Lalique, de Feure and Guimard among the men who combined an artistic vision of the highest order with the exacting and centuries old standards of European craftsmanship. Of the two centres of Art Nouveau in France, Paris and Nancy, it was Galle's devotion to the artistic heritage of the craft guilds which created the Nancy school. Philippe Garner's perceptive and sympathetic analysis, the first full scale study to appear in English, not only places Galle within context of Art Nouveau but also examines his involvement with the Symbolist poets, the literary significance which this imparted to his work and the manner in which he captured, in sculptural dorm, the whole spiriti of turn of the century Europe. Galle's mastery of richly transluscenet colors and elegant tracery of curving lines is nowhere more obvious than in his glasswork, the vases, bowls and lighting fixtures in exquisite shades of lilac, paink and orange which established Galle and his workshops as the foremost glass producers of the period. These same qualitites of linear grace and tonal subtley penetrated all of Galle's work, from the deeply tinted furniture carved in exotic woof to his decorative and exhuberant pieces in faience. Emile Galle's position as one of the most provacative and multi-faceted talents in Europe at the turn of the century is here confirmed by the richness and variety of his oeuvre in all media, the distillation of an artistic vision which impresses primarily by its nuances and its delicacy." - blurb from back of book. VG- (Small sticker inside front cover, minor wear to edges) .