VITROCOLOR is a specialised company in producing decorative glass obtained following several trsditional styles such as : E. Galle, Daum Nancy, Muller, Schneider.

To obtain these hand-made pieces we need time, work and a lot of ability.

The first and in the same time the most important stage in realising these decorative objects is that of obtaining the white glass in a special oven.

The next stage is reprezented by the hand blowing of the glass in several coloured layers.

The models painted on the works are covered by tar in order to be protected when immersing them in an acid bath.

The fluorhydric acid attacks the glass creating reliefs, nuances and light and shade effects thus appearing the final decoration.

The next stage is that of removing the imperfections through mecanic graving by polishing and finishing them. This well graving allows the engraver to shape and polish the glass.

The decorative works obtained in the Galle style become valuable for their own form, material and décor. All these handcraft works are not made at random. They are the result of multiple experiances, of a precise work and are manufactured by extremely skillful craftmen.

EMILE GALLE
(1846 – 1904)

Charles Galle, Emile Galle’s father, arrived in Nancy in 1844.When Charles Galle arrived  he was attracted by the possibilities of this business. He saw ample opportunity for expansion in his family business and he added table glassware to manufacturing. It was into this success of commerce and craft that Emile Galle was born in 1846.
Allowed four years of further education, Emile travelled to Germany where he managed to spend time in the Saar glassworks of Burgun, Schwerer & Co, learning the chemistry and tehnology of glassmaking. He was already contributing designs to his father’s ceramic tableware and had established a firm friendship with Victor Prouve. Together, they began to experiment with the design and manufacture of glass.
In 1870 Emile enlisted as a volunteer infantryman of the line.
Returning to France, Galle visited Paris before travelling to Italy and Switzerland. He admiring the work of past ages and cultures. He felt the greatest sympathy of that of French Rococo. At the heart of the Rococo was the desire to explore and imitate the forms of nature. Galle had spent his childhood admiring the random forms of nature and wondering how to adapt them to his own craft, and in the Rococo he found both inspiration and education.
In 1873, Galle’s father built a grand family house in Nancy in solid bourgeois style. Nicknamed La Garenne, it was a symbol of his success; a family house for a family business. Emile convinced his father to bring all their factories and workshops from neighbouring regions together  and concentrate them in Nancy. A year later, Galle senior could see his soon was in control and retired completely. The year after that, Emille married Henriette Grimm.
By 1878, Emile Gale had sent his first collection of glassware to the Decorative Arts exhibition in Paris. During the 1870s and 1880s he experimented with different styles on the way to establishing his own, and was stongly aware of the prevailing fashion for medievalism. Medieval Syrian and Venetian glass provided him with a starting point for learning the application of enamels. He added more adventurous shades to their crude primary colours until he had a palette including pinks and violets, half-shades and pastels. He made the enamel translucent so it absorbed light, giving it a livelier lustre. And from the European literature of legends, he took the decorative themes of heraldic motifs and the imagery of knight and their ladies.
Japanese art provided Galle with similar inspiration, encouraging him to push out the bounds of contemporary glass in shape and content. He learnt the expressive power of the line, and how to abstract a flower and yet still retain its essence. A specific explanation for this impact on his work was provided by the presence of a Japanese student in Nancy. In 1885, Tokouso Takashima came to study botany at the Ecole Forestier and he quikly became friends with Galle.
What Galle most responded to in Japanese art was its reverence for natural forms, particularly flowers.
The flowers and plants on his vases retained their illusionistic effect without becoming two-dimensional patterns. Galle visited famous gardens throughout Europe.
Galle goes on to descibe a remarkable range of glass effects and chemical combinations that produced them.
On 17 May 1900, Galle was admitted to Nancy’s prestigious Academie Stanislas.
In 1901, Galle founded the School of Nancy and became its president. The School became soon a leader of French Art Nouveau. The School of Nancy continued to set the pace for French Art Nouveau until 1904. In that year, Emile Galle died. It was leukaemia that killed him at the age of 58.
The factory with 450 workmen managed by his wife (until 1914 when she died) continued to produce glass of an ordinary standard until 1931, when it finally shut down.
Not surprisingly, eloquent as ever, Galle himself neatly summarized the essence and aim of his work:” The study of nature, the love of nature’s art, and the need to express what one feels in one’s heart”.

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