About this piece
Spherical vase with numerous small fish, the vase is called 'Oléron' but is also called 'Petits poissons'.
The vase is extremely refined and beautifully made, it is executed in opalescent glass. The glass consists of multiple layers of opalescent and transparent glass on top of each other, this can be clearly seen at the neck, like the rings of a tree, you see a kind of rings that differ in colour intensity, those are the different layers of glass, (cased opalescent glass), it is a difficult technique. The vase still has very light traces of a patina, so it has had a patina. Through use and especially through cleaning the vase, the infamous annual scrub, the patina has been lost almost completely. In itself, this is not a problem at all because it was an addition to the design. Lalique originally made and sold the vase with and without patina. It just depended on the preference of the buyer. To achieve opalescent glass, a special alloy is needed, everyone had their own secret recipe. René Lalique used, in addition to the usual ingredients such as silicon dioxide or sodium, arsenic, which was banned after the war, and real gold, to increase the colour intensity. Opalescent glass has the special property that it appears bluish/white when backlit, and when light shines on the vase, the glass gets an intense golden glow, as if the sun is shining on it. Very beautiful. The first photo was taken while the vase was placed in front of the window with the sun shining outside. The rather distracting background has been removed, but nothing has been done or altered to the vase itself.
The vase is blown into the mould. It is a design by René Lalique from 1927 and has model number 1008. It was listed in the catalogue of 1928 and 1932.
The vase is signed on the underside with: 'R. Lalique, France, No. 1008'. This signature is applied with the wheel (molette). This way of signing, with the addition 'France' and the model number, was only used between 1928-1932. After 1932, the model number was omitted. According to literature, this was also only done with objects that were blown into the mould, very occasionally an object was still signed in this way if the pressed signature was not clear.
At some point, in the early 1930s, René Lalique, partly due to the crisis, decided to no longer produce designs with labour-intensive finishes. This vase was also part of that decision, and it is therefore no longer mentioned in the 1937 catalogue.
The Municipal Museum of The Hague also has an opal Oléron vase in its collection.
