Fashion’s Goldsmith-A Visit to Lalique: 1900

Leafy Lalique aquamarine brooch, c. 1900 https://www.christies.com/lotfinder/jewelry/art-nouveau-glass-enamel-aquamarine-and-diamond-6197895-details.aspx?from=salesummery&intobjectid=6197895&sid=2af51e56-451a-4f32-867e-4521e24be801

FASHION’S GOLDSMITH.

He Creates Birds and Flowers of Precious Stones.

The most prized and splendid jewels that have found their way into the caskets of princesses and millionaires of late are from the studio of Rini [sic] Lalique, artist, inventor, and worker in gems, ivory, and the precious metals. Women of the “smart set” who had the good fortune to see the wonderful specimens of this man’s work given Miss Julia Grant by the Prince Cantaruzene at the time of their wedding enjoyed a new emotion as well as a revelation in the art of personal adornment. This Benvenuto Cellini of today is in no sense of the word a shopkeeper and the fashionable woman who takes her annual trip to Paris this year to find show cases filled with trinkets made to imitate his style, will at once observe what an immense influence his originality of method has had upon the trade. If she is determined to see the interior of Lalique’s studio and talk with a very interesting man, she must seek out someone who knows where he bides in the quiet side street, and go armed with an introduction to the grey house, which bears beside the entrance door a small brass plate inscribed Lalique-Joallier.

A French artisan in a long blouse seeks the master, while you look around the room. In the centre are two upright cases, like those seen in museums, and by the windows a few tables with glass tops, similar to those ladies affect for their drawing-room curios. There is no suspicion of the shopkeeper in anything here. This is an artist’s studio, and as Lalique’s work appeals only to the elect, his guests admire and choose their purchases after the manner of pictures. Here they can see his methods and understand why It Is that his work has been admitted to the Salon among the chef d’oeuvres of great painters and sculptors.

Soon a young man who looks very like Paul Bourget comes in with a pleasant greeting, and listens modestly to your enthusiastic admiration of the spray of fuchsias which nod like real flowers as your footsteps jar the floor and which look quite as fragile as the real flower.

Lalique began life as a painter, but his genius was for another branch of art, one much more rare than painting; therefore he soon deserted the brush for his present implements. He first did some designing for a great American firm but longing to execute his own bold and original ideas, and now with a host of followers (all Paris, in fact) crowding on his footsteps, he leads the goldsmiths of the world. Never before has a jeweler looked upon the metals and gems as nothing but colors for his palate, but to Lalique’s eyes gold, silver, precious stones, and enamels are but materials which bring to life the golden pictures of his fancy. He colors the metals, chips the stones, mixes the cheap gems with the expensive and makes therewith works of art. Enamels take on new hues under his skilled fingers, while ivory and bone lend their dull colors to heighten the effect of his creations.

He colors gold and carves the opal so marvelously, that a comb for a princess, made of dull grey horn, becomes a stunning frame for a graceful woman’s figure, which leans against the side holding a great bunch of drooping pampas In her hand. Woman, grass, and delicate foliage, in the background are all a miniature painting done in gold of many colors, opal, enamel, and ivory.

The imagination of the poet shows In every piece of this man’s work, drawing the line thus between the genius and the many talented designers who can imitate and follow him successfully. Rough opal is the material greatly used by Lalique. The golden sunset, the soft shine of the moonlight, the fleecy clouds beside innumerable flowers and living objects are wonderfully pictured by the way in which this artist uses this material. Diamonds, pearls, emeralds, rubies, and turquoises are but parts of his design, and the way in which he employs amethyst as other jewelers use enamel is productive of amazing results.

One sort of ornament which Lalique particularly likes, because its shape and position on the dress allows his fancy great play, is intended for the front of a belt, a low corsage, or a neckband. A wonderful dragon shining with color and belching forth clouds of opal, is a design for one of these. A second is a landscape showing through the tree trunks of many colored gold the opal of the sunset shining in a pool of diamonds, and still another is a spray of beautifully colored roses with their leaves growing inside a thread-like frame of gold as though they were growing outside the window. A few rings, queer brooches, a rope of seed pearls finished by a tassel of rubies, a pendant or two, all fanciful, poetic, unique, and enchanting, are all Lalique has to show his visitor. The court of Russia is constantly snatching up his finest pieces as they come from his hands, and in England the great families who are so proud of their jewels are constant visitors to his quiet apartments. He works very slowly, and except for his yearly exhibit at the Salon, can make no display, his works are nearly always sold before they are finished.

Washington [DC] Times 8 April 1900: p. 19

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: While to-day the work of M. Lalique is highly prized and sells for fabulous sums whenever it comes to auction, the critics of the past were not so kind. For example, this author finds Lalique cloyingly pretty:

We confess to some hesitation in expressing frankly the impression produced on us by M. Lalique’s work, because in looking back on the history of modern art we find that whenever work has been condemned for its tendencies with the admission of its technical excellence, the verdict of a succeeding generation has always been in favour of the artist. It is, in short, dangerous to condemn on some high moral or abstract aesthetic grounds work of which the technical excellence is indisputable. And yet, if we are to be sincere, that is what we are inclined to do to M. Lalique’s jewellery. To us its prettiness is exasperating—its extraordinary effectiveness, its too obvious and assertive charm, cloying….Nor is his rendering of natural forms really impressive ; it lacks intimacy and intensity of feeling…And if the line is nowhere arrested, nowhere determined by architectural necessity, the colour schemes are equally vague and indeterminate…Where therefore, as here, a discord is out of the question, no very intense or moving harmony can occur, the colour never rises to beauty, it remains obdurately and annoyingly pretty.

The Athenaeum 27 May 1905: p. 664

Another found him lacking in style:

The chief thing lacking in M. Lalique’s’ jewellery, as in that of his imitators, is style. And it is for this reason that so many people, even those most devoted to that which is novel, refuse to regard his productions as other than vain and transitory things. Certain it is that the composition of some of M. Lalique’s work suggests haste—facile haste; this or that detail deserved closer study, demanded firmer drawing, stronger characterisation. Thus, while acknowledging fully our indebtedness to M. Lalique for having renovated and revived the art of jewel-working, one cannot but regret that he should too often have been content to make a direct copy of floral forms when a careful stylisation would have been far more effective. A natural flower is decorative of itself, and no jewel however precious can compare with it on a woman’s breast or in her hair.

The Studio, Vol. 23: p. 1901: pp. 27-30

Finally, this critic has a rather amusing, yet valid, reason for disliking Lalique:

At times even—most unjustly, I admit—one almost comes to hate the art of M. Lalique himself, so persistently is it badly imitated.

Modern Design in Jewellery and Fans, Charles Holme, 1902: p. 2

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.