Description
c1910 D'Argental French Scenic Cameo Glass Vase with Shepherd Scene 11.75" x<br>5.5". Incredible complex labor intensive piece of over 100 year old hand<br>engraved art nouveau French cameo glass with no issues or damage whatsoever.St<br>Louis had been and still is one of the great old glass houses of France; they<br>had gone to the Paris exhibition in 1900 expecting to be crowned king of glass,<br>only to be completely out-classed by the cameo glass of the ‘upstart’ Emile<br>Galle. In the early 1920s they were still trying to get their own back. Paul<br>Nicolas cut a deal with St Louis –he would make cameo glass for them using their<br>facilities and then also he could use their facilities to make cameo glass for<br>himself too. This was before the days of ‘studio art glass’ if you had a glass<br>kiln you were a major sized business, not a one-man-band. The pieces Nicolas<br>made for St Louis were signed a number of ways, but quite soon they settled on<br>‘D’Argental’ (the brand name they had established for their own previous,<br>unsuccessful attempts at Cameo glass). Nicolas sneakily added a cross of<br>Lorraine to the mark to indicate when he personally made a piece. When he made<br>Cameo for himself pieces were signed ‘P. Nicolas’ usually followed by<br>‘Nancy’.Production at St Louis clearly had its limitations, the crystal glass<br>they used, had a more limited colour palate than he was used to at Galle and the<br>extra toughness of the crystal glass meant internal polishing was effectively<br>impossible. But using crystal did mean the cameo and wheel cutting could be much<br>finer.B61
