Beautiful Le Verre Français oblong "Chicory" vase, France 1920s. Signed with the tricolour blue, white and red "berlingot".
Dimensions in cm ( H x D ) : 28 x 13.5
Excellent condition.
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The glassmaking adventure of the two Schneider brothers began in Nancy, at the heart of a prestigious art glassworks: Daum Frères since 1878.
In 1902, Ernest was hired by the commercial and administrative director, Auguste Daum. From the outset, the latter did not hesitate to praise the merits of his brother Charles, who trained at the Nancy School of Fine Arts.
Antonin Daum, head of the artistic department, took little time to detect the full potential of such a collaboration. Aged only sixteen, Charles Schneider participated in the Art Nouveau adventure alongside the Daum brothers by designing new projects for vases in glass and glass paste.
Glass paste, a changing material, which relates more to sculpture, is the great innovation. Even if this technique was rediscovered by Charles Depret and Henry Cros in 1884, it was Amalric Walter, chief decorator of the Daum factory, who gave it its credentials.
Supported by Antonin Daum, Charles Schneider obtained a scholarship and continued his studies at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, in the workshops of Jean-Charles Chaplain and Frédéric de Vernon (1858-1912).
Charles Schneider is therefore one of the great glass artists of the School of Nancy, an alliance of artists and industrialists initiated by Émile Gallé. He will be made aware of it from an early age and trained in a new and global aesthetic.
The Schneider siblings worked for the Daum factory until 1911, the year when the desire to stand on their own feet was felt...
This departure of a big name in French glass to found his own factory is not an isolated case. Let us recall the story of the Muller brothers, members of the Émile Gallé art glassworks team, who decided to take with them many of the great master's secrets and sketches...
The departure of the Schneider brothers will be done with the greatest respect, a required condition of fertile ground for what will become one of the largest art glassworks in Europe!
With the compensation received by Ernest upon his departure and the financial contribution of an associate, the architect Henri Wolff, the Schneider family finally had the means to fulfill its ambition.
Schneider glassworks (1913 - 1938)
The timing wasn't perfect. In 1913, a year before the Great War, Charles and Ernest Schneider founded “Les Verreries Schneider” in Épinay-sur-Seine, in Seine-Saint-Denis, Île-de-France region.
The activity had barely started when it had to stop because of the world conflict.
The First World War of 1914-18 shut down a number of Parisian glassworks, such as the Legras glassworks, located in Plaine Saint-Denis, which employed more than 1,400 workers and 150 artist-decorators.
The Lorraine glassworks are not left out. Portieux, which produced more than 40,000 pieces of glassware each month before 1914, saw its production greatly impacted. Its sidekick, the Vallérysthal crystal factory, participated in the war effort, blowing up to 3,500 jars of canning per day.
Schneider glassworks are resisting despite rock-bottom demand. The Schneider brothers participated in the war effort by producing medical glassware in 1917.
As soon as the war ended, in 1918, the economic recovery made it possible to restart the machine. Efforts are concentrated on one type of production: art glassware.
Success is immediate, notably favored by an irrepressible desire to party, live in the present moment, enjoy life to the fullest. Paris will be the most beautiful showcase. This decade of pleasure, nicknamed the Roaring Twenties, is a suspended time that benefits art.
The Schneider glassworks then employed 500 workers. But that's not all.
The aftermath of the Great War saw the emergence of a new movement, an artistic movement in complete opposition to the abundance of arabesques and curves of Art Nouveau.
Little by little, Schneider pieces and vases with enameled decoration of flowers and landscapes give way to a simplification of forms, a return to symmetry, a nature that geometries and adapts to the new world of machines.
The “Le Verre Français” brand was registered in October 1918. This line was created at the same time as the previous one. It was sold in the same street, at number 14, in a warehouse entrusted to Ernestine, the older sister.
This collection of vases and bowls presents a plant decoration particularly appreciated by American customers. What makes it rich is the wide variety of acid-etched decorations, presenting a contrast of materials (smooth versus matte).
The worked colors are less prolific than the Schneider line. Its wide distribution allows it to be profitable despite the additional work caused by acid etching work.
There are three signatures that identify “Le Verre Français” vases:
- A tricolor carton
- French Glass
- And finally, from 1925, the term Charder