Tiffany and Gallé: Art Nouveau glass

The Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest greeted spring last week with a grand opening of a special exhibition - the Tiffany and Gallé Art Nouveau glass collection - which both the American and the French ambassadors attended.

The objects belong to the museum collection, and were last shown to the public in 1980, when the the Art Nouveau period`s significance and impact were revaluated as the style went through a period of renaissance.

The American Louis Comfort Tiffany Fifty and his French counterpart Emille Gallé are two of the most significant glass artists from the turn of the 19th century, when they introduced a lighter, more simple, playful style inspired by Japanese culture.

At that time the influence from Japan had started to become a defining fashion among western artists and designers.

The two artists might have employed old techniques of working, but they left behind the heavy, symmetrical style characteristic of the bourgeois class from that time.

Their objects expressed complex moods and emotions.

The 56 Tiffany goblets, vases, and plates, exhibited here in glass boxes in the dim light of a gallery on the ground floor of the museum, reveal the American artist`s composition methods.

His decorative, beautifully colored Peacock vase, the flower-shaped glass, and the golden collection of items show that Tiffany`s emphasis was on light, brilliance and color.

An interesting and rare object is Tiffany`s Lava work, raised on a pedestal, which conveys the flowing lava of a volcano with his characteristic elegance and shine .

Gallé`s 42 works, on the other hand, appear more ornamental, inspired by organic forms he found in nature as well as, in one instance here, in Victor Hugo`s poem The Night.

He used a multi-layered glass technique, alternating colors and shiny and matt surfaces to create charming objects with poetic names like Vase with Dandelions and Vase with daffodil buds and flowers.

This is a rare and valuable collection by any standards. Part of it was first purchased by the Hungarian collector Jenô Radisics in 1898, another part was bought at the world exhibition in Paris in 1900, and the third, most significant and valuable, part was donated by the collector Dr Ottó Fettick, known for his taste for high quality glass and porcelain objects.

Apart from Tiffany and Gallé`s collection, several works of the most significant French artists from that time are also displayed: Ernest Léveille, Camille Tutré de Varreux, Christopher Dresser and Emil Rudolf, to name a few.

There are also the works of Hungarian artists, and a curiosity in itself is the glass work of the Hungarian artist József Rippl-Rónai otherwise known for his paintings, who made a set of ornamental glasses for the dining table of Count Tivadar Andrássy.

Several of the beautiful, delicate Japanese boxes, with motifs of cherry blossom, peacocks, birds and butterflies, as well as asymmetrical composition methods, that inspired both Gallé and Tiffany, are also on view in one corner.

A relaxing couch and a coffee table await the visitor at the back of the room, and there is space dedicated to children where they can color drawings of vases, to make both parents and children feel at home among these special objects.

Infobox
Museum of Applied Arts
Pest, District IX
Üllôi út 33-37
Until Nov 18

Andreea Anca
www.budapestsun.com - Wednesday, March 28, 2007