RLalique.com-Rene Lalique

Rene Lalique - A Giant Among Giants

Rene Lalique Short Video Biography with Gerard Tavenas.

Born 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. He attended Sydenham Art College in 1878 in London, and returned to France in 1880, the same year the college closed its doors. 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 and a growing list of clients. By 1886 he had begun operations at his own workshop. This is also the year that Rene Lalique married his first wife, Marie-Louis Lambert.

In 1890, Rene Lalique opened a new jewelry shop in a fashionable area at 20 Rue Therese. Lalique also met and married, 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.

2 years later, in 1892, Rene Lalique's first child, Suzanne, 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 notable patron, Sarah Bernhardt, he exhibited at the Salon of 1895, and his 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 was a sensation with the roughly 50 million visitors to the Exposition. There 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. Lalique's second child, Marc was also born in 1900.

1902 saw probably his first, and surely among his most significant architectural achievements. His unique design contributions to his own townhouse at 40, Cours la Reine in Paris (this is now renamed Cours Albert). Lalique did not design the house, but many of the unique and creative design enhancements were created by Lalique, including the famous glass panel doors, the design of which, showing pinecones and pine branch, continued into the walls around the doors.

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 1905, Lalique opened a retail store in the Place Vendome in Paris. Fortuitously, his new store was located very close to the shop of the perfume seller, Francois Coty.

By 1908 Rene Lalique had already made significant experiments with the use of glass in his jewelry and in decorative objects, and it was that year that he designed the first perfume bottle labels and then the bottles themselves, for Francois Coty, changing the face of the perfume business forever. Prior to this time, perfume bottles were just plain flasks that held expensive perfumes. But with the invention of synthetic oils that could be used to mass produce perfume, Rene Lalique saw the potential to take a plain everyday object and turn it into an art object. He became the preeminent manufacturer of perfume bottles, designing and producing hundreds of perfume bottles for dozens of firms. His very first designs for Coty were made by Legras Glassworks, but Lalique also rented a glass factory in 1908 in the small town of Combs-la-Ville which he would purchase in 1913. This confirmed his transition from designer and manufacturer of jewelry and objects d'art, to designer and manufacturer of glass objects.

1909 saw the death of Rene Lalique's second wife.

In 1911, Rene Lalique designed many of the glass components, including windows for the Coty Building on Fifth Avenue in New York City. By 1912 Rene Lalique was producing an array of glass objects in addition to perfume bottles, and exhibiting successful at the Salons in Paris. He was also undertaking architectural commissions for the incorporation of glass objects in various buildings around the world,

The period from 1912 to 1914 saw the production of two of the great works of Rene Lalique, both of which are partially pictured on this page. The Cire Perdue Vase Huit Perruches shown above, and the Cire Perdue Wasps Vase pictured at the top of this page, are two of the enduring legacies of artistic and technical achievement of this great artisan. 1912 also saw the first all glass Exposition put on by Rene Lalique. The pictured invitation is in the form of a green glass medallion with mistletoe decoration on the reverse, which Lalique used to promote this Exposition in December of 1912.

During World War I, the glass factory of Rene Lalique manufactured many practical items made necessary by the ongoing war, including plain glass bottles and containers for hospitals and medicines.

Overall, the period before 1920 saw an amazing array of objects from one of a kind molded and cire perdue vases, to ashtrays, cachets, and tableware. Hundreds upon hundreds of different designs, both single, and large scale commercial production items were created during this period. Rene Lalique brought his design and industrial talents to creating just about anything that could be made artistically with glass. This also included car mascots, light fixtures, statues, fountains, and a dizzying array of other objects. Rene Lalique employed up to 600 people at one time, and brought art into the lives of ordinary people thru both useful and decorative glass creations which the public clamored to purchase. But Rene Lalique did not stop at just industrial production to create his magical glass. Many of his works were subject to post manufacture touches including enameling, patinating, frosting, and polishing; all designed to create even more unique and desirable objects.

Rene Lalique's automobile mascot creations are legendary to this day, and can sell for upwards of $100,000 for the rarest of his works. The most expensive and fanciest cars of his day were adorned with one of his mascots. He also designed bases to hold the mascots, and special wiring and lighting inside the base that could be adjusted using colored filters, so that the mascot would glow in any of several colors while the car was being driven.

The early 1920's saw Rene Lalique expanding his glassmaking to include the design and manufacturing work on the interior of several ocean liners including The Paris (1921) The Ile de France (1927), and most famously, The Normandie (1935), said at the time to be the largest object ever put in motion by man. By 1925, the year of the Exposition des Arts Decoratifs in Paris, Rene Lalique was without equal in the field, and his participation in this Exposition was a highlight of his career. In 1927, as part of a large number of architectural commissions, Rene Lalique designed many architectural components for the Oviatt Building in Los Angeles, shipping 30 tons of his R Lalique glass through the Panama Canal to get it to Los Angeles. Lalique was also asked in 1927 to design the interiors for the famous Orient Express Railroad dining cars. In 1929 he did the decorations for the the famous Peace Hotel in Shanghai. The early 1930's saw Rene Lalique doing significant design work in several churches, and Lalique also did significant design work on the Imperial Palace of Prince Asaka in Tokyo. This palace is today the Teien Museum. In 1933, an extraordinary retrospective exhibition for the still living artist and industrialist was held in Paris to honor the great Frenchman.

The start of World War II shut down the production and business of Rene Lalique. He died in 1945 and is buried at the Le Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, under a gravestone inset with a glass crucifix of his own design.

Today, the output of Rene Lalique, commonly referred to by his moniker, RLalique, is highly sought after in many different fields of collecting. Glass car mascots (hood ornaments) are the most sought after of all car mascots, not just by collectors of RLalique, or by general glass collectors, but also by antique car collectors. His mascots grace the hoods of some of the greatest cars of the early 20th century at car shows, in private collections, and in automobile museums. Perfume bottle collectors value RLalique bottles most highly. RLalique glass architectural commissions, windows, glass panels and the like, are fiercely competed for in their rare appearances on the auction block. Collectors of cachets (seals) highly value the wonderful RLalique designs, and the jewelry of Rene Lalique creates huge prices at auction when it crosses the block. His production vases are collected by people all over the world, and Rene Lalique's one of a kind Cire Perdue creations are found in a few private collections, and in museums worldwide, where one can also find the entire variety of his artistic talents. He was in his time, and remains even today, over 60 years after his death, THE MAN in many fields. The entirety of his output, his RLalique, is what our website is all about.

For more information about Rene Lalique and the wonderful R Lalique items he created, we suggest you take your time exploring the vast amount of information available at RLalique.com, and also that you visit the RLalique.com Library, where you will find literally hundreds of books and catalogues containing additional information about Rene Lalique, his life, his times, and his works.

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