c1910 St Louis D'Argental French Scenic Cameo Glass Vase with Shepherd Scene 11.

Description: c1910 D'Argental French Scenic Cameo Glass Vase with Shepherd Scene 11.75" x
5.5". Incredible complex labor intensive piece of over 100 year old hand
engraved art nouveau French cameo glass with no issues or damage whatsoever.St
Louis had been and still is one of the great old glass houses of France; they
had gone to the Paris exhibition in 1900 expecting to be crowned king of glass,
only to be completely out-classed by the cameo glass of the ‘upstart’ Emile
Galle. In the early 1920s they were still trying to get their own back. Paul
Nicolas cut a deal with St Louis –he would make cameo glass for them using their
facilities and then also he could use their facilities to make cameo glass for
himself too. This was before the days of ‘studio art glass’ if you had a glass
kiln you were a major sized business, not a one-man-band. The pieces Nicolas
made for St Louis were signed a number of ways, but quite soon they settled on
‘D’Argental’ (the brand name they had established for their own previous,
unsuccessful attempts at Cameo glass). Nicolas sneakily added a cross of
Lorraine to the mark to indicate when he personally made a piece. When he made
Cameo for himself pieces were signed ‘P. Nicolas’ usually followed by
‘Nancy’.Production at St Louis clearly had its limitations, the crystal glass
they used, had a more limited colour palate than he was used to at Galle and the
extra toughness of the crystal glass meant internal polishing was effectively
impossible. But using crystal did mean the cameo and wheel cutting could be much
finer.B61