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THE MAGAZINE DECIPHERING
Daum a hymn to Nature
With the arrival of the industrial era in
the 19th century, urban development
ran riot, driving populations
together in chaotic suburbs where
machines churned away endlessly,
and factory chimneys rose up against the skies, obscuring
them with billows of smoke. Banished from the
world of men, beauty took refuge in nature. And that
was where it now had to be sought out. And so well-todo
households sprouted winter gardens, where every
care was lavished on the plants, while public
glasshouses provided a home for exotic specimens, to
the delight of visitors. The Nancy botanical garden,
which inherited a plant collection at the end of the
17th century, was the pride of the city, famous for its
horticulture all over the world. The work of its director,
Dominique Alexandre Godron, who taught Émile Gallé,
largely inspired the artist's plant collections. And this
was the start of something new: from then on, flowers
would blossom on glass. The capital of Lorraine
provided particularly fertile soil for a naturalistic
movement, but this movement was already taking
hold throughout the country. Saturated with the
aesthetic of the Ancien Régime, the subject of extravagant
pastiche in the first half of the 19th century, the
high priests of Art Nouveau took exactly the opposite
stance, where nature bent rigorously constructed lines,
the East became a new yardstick, and symbolism
opened the way to another reality. The decorative arts
plunged into the gulf of non-conformism – no doubt
too enthusiastically, as "overkill" always lurks behind
any stylistic excess... And Art Nouveau succumbed to it
in a few years. However, numerous achievements bear
witness to the marvels of inventiveness and technical
102 GAZETTE DROUOT INTERNATIONAL I N° 23
sophistication deployed by the innovative aesthetic,
whose apogee was celebrated in the Exposition
Universelle of 1900. A year later, in support of this
dynamic movement, Émile Gallé instigated an alliance
between professionals: the Ecole de Nancy, where
science, industry and marketing (far ahead of its time)
married well with the arts. The Daum brothers –
Auguste the lawyer and Antonin the engineer – were
part of this venture. Antonin, completely enchanted by
Gallé's works, which he discovered in the Exposition
Universelle of 1889, decided to broadly disseminate
the naturalistic style through his own creations. In the
glassworks bought by their father in 1878, the two
brothers began to redirect production towards a more
artistic expression, through a decoration workshop
they opened in 1891. Aided by the latest discoveries in
chemistry, colour was introduced into designs, and the
factory rapidly became the leading edge of technical
innovation in glass. The sector was all the more flourishing
at the time in that decorative objects, flaunted as
a gauge of social success, had the wind in their sails.
Apart from businessmen, Daum's aim was to attract a
broader clientele of art lovers through a large quantity
of high quality art glass objects. No fewer than three
hundred workers laboured to this end between 1900
and 1914. The company held a large number of
exhibitions to present its most outstanding creations
and advertise its innovations. These were regularly
acclaimed with awards, for the brothers stopped at
nothing to prove their virtuosity, combining
techniques to transform glass and model it in the
image of nature, the supreme yardstick for Art
Nouveau. Illusionism reached its height with a vase
produced in 1905 in the form of a marrow with a