.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The largest pate-de-verre work by Gabriel Argy-Rousseau to be sold at auction, this ceiling fixture is the successful result of an elaborate glass process. Complex models like this multiple-piece and monumental fixture were difficult to execute and to fire, expensive to produce and are consequently rare.
Pate-de-verre is a unique form of glassmaking derived from ancient techniques revived and further developed in France at the turn of the century by a group of pioneering artists, including the ceramist Henri Cros (1840-1907) at Svres, Almeric Walter (1859-1942) from the Daum glassworks, and Gabriel Argy-Rousseau (1885-1953). The pate-de-verre method, literally translated as 'glass paste', consists of finely crushed glass crystals mixed with a binding agent as well as with various metallic oxides added for coloration; these elements can be sculpted or molded, as with clay, to produce scupltural forms and plaques, or hollow vessels. While blown glass is given its shape when still molten after which surface decoration may be applied, painted, carved or acid-etched, pate-de-verre is shaped when in a cold rather than a molten state. The glass is then fired in order to re-vitrify the crystals. The result of this technique is a glass that is decorated or colored throughout its mass rather than applied with decoration on its surface.
Over the course of his artistic career, Argy-Rousseau developed a semi-industrial technique of using molds to produce multiple works from a single model. For each design, he made up a wax model that would then be used to make the plaster mold from which a final fire-clay model could be produced. This was the most important stage in the work when the artist, having completed his plans and preparatory sketches, was ready to create the piece itself. Nevetheless, the actual pate-de-verre or glass paste had to be re-mixed with its color-producing oxides for each separate work, and even minimal variations in mixing or firing might produce wide variations in the finished color.
cf. Janine Bloch-Dermant, G. Argy-Rousseau, Glassware as Art, 1991, p. 103 for a sketch of the design of this unusual model.
Pate-de-verre is a unique form of glassmaking derived from ancient techniques revived and further developed in France at the turn of the century by a group of pioneering artists, including the ceramist Henri Cros (1840-1907) at Svres, Almeric Walter (1859-1942) from the Daum glassworks, and Gabriel Argy-Rousseau (1885-1953). The pate-de-verre method, literally translated as 'glass paste', consists of finely crushed glass crystals mixed with a binding agent as well as with various metallic oxides added for coloration; these elements can be sculpted or molded, as with clay, to produce scupltural forms and plaques, or hollow vessels. While blown glass is given its shape when still molten after which surface decoration may be applied, painted, carved or acid-etched, pate-de-verre is shaped when in a cold rather than a molten state. The glass is then fired in order to re-vitrify the crystals. The result of this technique is a glass that is decorated or colored throughout its mass rather than applied with decoration on its surface.
Over the course of his artistic career, Argy-Rousseau developed a semi-industrial technique of using molds to produce multiple works from a single model. For each design, he made up a wax model that would then be used to make the plaster mold from which a final fire-clay model could be produced. This was the most important stage in the work when the artist, having completed his plans and preparatory sketches, was ready to create the piece itself. Nevetheless, the actual pate-de-verre or glass paste had to be re-mixed with its color-producing oxides for each separate work, and even minimal variations in mixing or firing might produce wide variations in the finished color.
cf. Janine Bloch-Dermant, G. Argy-Rousseau, Glassware as Art, 1991, p. 103 for a sketch of the design of this unusual model.